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Wolf Mother Reborn
- Wolf Mother Reborn -
A fantasy fiction based in part on some of my past-life memories…
“When the Wolf Mother returns,
The winds of the north shall howl!
When the long Line of Kings burns,
The gods themselves shall scowl.
An exiled prince, a bastard named,
Shall with his sister forge a dynasty!
No blood between them to be shamed.
It is she who will inherit the nobility!”
--- From the Forgotten Prophecies of the Northlands
Part One: The Journey North
The lands of the far north were not a welcoming domain to strangers, wanderers, or idle passers-by who might be on some errand or journey across the old roads that crisscrossed the length and breadth of the minor kingdoms that lay spread out under the banner of the High King like a wanton whore’s legs for her lover of the moment. If these kingdoms played the harlot, the King played the whore’s master with hungry relish. I remember that I grew up hearing tales of his oppressive and sometimes rather perverse tactics of rule, and in my heart I hated him with all the fire in my breast. But like all good sluts, I had to submit to my master’s whims and wishes in order that I might remain free to practice my trade. My particular trade was that of a princess born to a noble house, one of the minor kingdoms. My home was not in the northlands but the tales I heard my father often tell of them captured my imagination like naught else could. He told of hard and hardy people who some called barbarians and wild folk, and whom legend had distorted beyond all semblance of their true reality. It was said of them that they lived in lands of ice and eternal winter, wearing cloaks of wolves and bears. Their women were said to be fair-haired and that they had skin so white that you could not distinguish them from the whiteness of northern snow. In my childish mind, I suppose I likened them to fey sprits or some such. My own hair was raven black in color, as was that of most of the women in my family, as had been father’s hair before it turned gray as autumn fog. But the old gray wolf had a fondness for his tales, and I had a fondness for listening to them on lonely nights. The weather of the north was said to be far beyond the severest winters of our lands, and their summer was as cold as our coldest autumn. At best! At worst, it was said to be like a mild winter. I could not even imagine the frigidity of what their winters must be like! Yet I had some perverse longing to go and see that place. I knew not why, but the north called to me. Something was there that I knew I had to discover… perhaps something of myself that I needed to learn. But I knew the land would not care. The land never cared for aught but itself. For nature is capricious and cruel sometimes… yet fair to those with a will to conquer and to survive. I possessed such a will, from the earliest days of my girlhood. But until maturity, I had no idea how to embrace it.
It was not my custom to travel to such a distant land, unless ambition called me hither. I was a woman of proud and noble bearing, one used to silken gowns and the comforts of the palace. But for as far back as my girlhood, I could remember in truth how much I hated being confined even in so gilded a cage. I longed to be free, and so I had oft fantasized about what it might be like to make a journey either northward or southward, though I never gave other directions much thought. This kingdom, which I had been born into, was situated between other lands, and my father had oft told me of the wonders of the white lands beyond the north, or the hot, tropical lands of the south. Why I had not, on this occasion, chosen to journey southward, I doubt the ancient gods could even know. Something simply called me! And so, my father bade me go, in the company of a family servant, to the north. The servant was a quiet man, hooded, and wearing the royal robes of his office. The red sigil of our house, with black raven emblazoned upon it, was embroidered upon the front of his robes, and oft I had a mind to suspect there was something familiar about him… though I never pressed him to tell me of himself overmuch. His voice was familiar too, but I could not place it for he spoke with a slightly strange accent that I assumed was eastern. The gods can be cruel though! And as we rode in the royal caravan bound for our far destination, I had begun to wonder if the journey would ever end. The landscape we rode through was bleak, and the air grew ever more chill the farther north we went. I was dressed reasonably enough for the weather! I wore a pair of baggy red pantaloons, a loose blouse with long, billowing sleeves, and a warm leather vest over that. My booted feet were ready in case we should need to walk… and a black hooded fur cloak kept me warm when at least I began to spy snow upon the horizon. My long black hair was tied back with a gray ribbon, and as I looked out the windows of the wooden wagon I oft played with strands of it, just twirling the stands between my fingers, as I scanned the landscape before me. This was wild country, not a place for the daughter of a noble house! And yet, something had always called me hither. I was about to discover what that was… but a part of me longed for the palace, and for father’s reassuring voice. Rather than a cold land and even colder company!
I was not, perhaps a beautiful woman. I had a rather large nose, rather thin lips, and rather elfin features with high and haughty cheekbones and a small chin. My shape was slender, but not the hourglass figure of voluptuous women. Rather, I was sleek, slender, and slim as a jungle panther. All the women in my family looked thus, and it was whispered we had Faerie blood in our veins from some distant ancestors who came to these lands from somewhere in the east long ago, when history was young and the Line of Kings was still young as well. It was said we had been blood descendants of a bloodline of minor queens and kings who had been exiled for having loyalties to Queen Erin, the Wolf Mother of legend. I never did know what exactly that meant when I was growing up, but I was oft told that my mannerisms were like unto Erin’s. Or like how Erin’s were said to have been anyway! I hated having the feeling that I resembled father too much, for as I said I did not myself think that I was beautiful, though some told me they found me to be so. My breasts always seemed on the tiny side rather than voluptuous as most men prefer, and very oft I recall that when we were most alone and lonely my adopted brother would occasionally steal chances to touch and feel them through my garments while pinning me to a wall or to the bed in my chambers, and all the while pressing his hard manhood against me, yet never once daring to partake of me with it. I asked him why he actually preferred my breasts to those of far more: well-endowed women, and he said it was merely something about me and my body that made him desire to do so. He never really elaborated on it beyond that. Though I was not beautiful as such, I was perhaps simply a convenient way for him to explore a woman’s body when a prostitute or a lover could not be gotten. Once he even dared to expose my breasts, and plant his lips upon them… but he did nothing more to me beyond that! I never resisted him either. Something about his forbidden kisses and secret molestations of me made me excited rather than repelled. He was a handsome young man, and knew how to make me long for him in ways I could not speak aloud to father. Or to anyone! I had not seen him since he departed on some errand of his own to the north, and part of me missed his rather… amorous… attentions. I thought of him much, on that long journey northward!
He has been adopted into our family from another lineage, but one no one spoke of. The current High King was about the age he would be now as an adult, and their features resembled one another’s strongly. I wondered it mayhap my adopted brother was not in fact a blood brother to the High King himself! For there was a rumor whispered in certain taverns and inns by the common folk on cold winter nights… and that rumor said the previous High King was murdered by his wife, who then was poisoned by the King’s Seneschal to cover up the fact that the King had raped a virgin priestess of the gods, which was an unpardonable crime even for the High King to commit, and one punishable by public disgrace followed by an equally public execution by beheading. The old Seneschal then took the legitimate heir and raised him to be the High King who now reined over all the lands. But the child born to the virgin who had been raped… that bastard brother to the man now sitting upon the greatest throne in all the kingdoms… he was forced into exile under pain of death to his mother and all her living kin should they not flee. I remember once, when my adopted brother first came to live with us, that the woman who brought him wore a priestess’s gown and had the shaved head of a member of the holy orders of the gods. For me, this had always felt like too much of a coincidence though to save my “brother’s” life I never once spoke of it to anyone. My father never spoke of it either! And what ever became of the priestess, no one knows. She rode south, and was never heard from again in civilized lands. But should anything ever happen to the current High King, would not brother then stand to inherit the throne if the truth of his true parentage be revealed? Alas, no! For no bastard had ever been allowed to sit on the High King’s throne. But I always longed to see brother there, rather than the arrogant monster that reigned now. Yet, in his attentions towards me, was not the exiled High Prince much like his father had been towards the priestess he had taken by force? Though I never denied him his sport, still brother never once asked me for my consent. Should the means ever come to me, to place him upon the High King’s throne, I would need to find a way to keep him under control, lest he grow to be like his father and become a tyrant. I mused on such matters, during the longest and dullest parts of the trip north.
Part Two: The Tome Tower
The sun was warm upon my skin as I climbed from the back of the wagon and surveyed the wooden fort’s walls that lay before us. This was the place where father kept a garrison of his strongest and proudest warriors! They defended this old fort from threats of the wild, and it was said that none of the northern barbarians ever once passed its’ walls. Only their heads, but never their warriors! And I saw many of the severed heads and skulls of those enemies… mounted upon tall wooden stakes… as I, and my party, walked up the road towards the tall stockade on the hill. Walls ran from it to the west and to the east for as far as my eyes could see. Men patrolled the tops of those walks, carrying great spears and blades in their hands. Pennants and banners decorated the walls, seemingly the only finery here. My companion, the hooded servant, kept reminding me that there were as many women serving in this garrison as men, something unusual in these lands. Did my father honor my gender so highly? Oh, aye! For mother had been a great warrior queen before her death, and it was said that my own fiery temperament came from her. I was my father’s “Young Dragon” as he called me, though mother had been called the “Golden Lion” in her time. With mother’s death, the Age of the Lion ended and now was begun the Age of the Dragon. My time. I was to be queen myself one day, but before the hour to take a husband would arrive, I made up my mind that I would see something of the world and do great things, gods willing. It was decided that, should aught befall me, my elder sister Karin would inherit the throne. She could even function as regent during times I might wish to go abroad… though I hated how distant she often was, and how we never spoke much anymore. Unlike the days of our girlhood, when we would play outside in the King’s Gardens and imagine we were on grand adventures! Do girls often dream of such mad adventures? I know not, I know only that we did. But it was I, who inherited mother’s wanderlust… and so it was this that I suspect fated me to come to such a barren domain chasing a dream. My servant mentioned to me that on this day of the year, the King’s Seneschal was staying in the fort’s State Rooms. I could almost picture the old fop sitting at a desk, quill in hand, penning some missive in the King’s name. The High King’s name! I always imagined the Seneschal to be a total fool.
I was escorted to meet this fool, upon our arrival, since it was customary for a noble daughter, a princess of a minor king, to pay fealty to an emissary of that greater High King who ruled over all these lands. I saw he was very much an old fop, the Seneschal. Balding gray head, ferret-like features… a thin white mustache… he was a threatening looking fellow, to be sure! But a fop and a fool nonetheless… who dressed in colorful motley more suited to a jester than a nobleman in the very confidence of the ruler of all the lands. I bowed before him, and placed my right hand over my heart in the most traditional greeting of a noblewoman to a great lord. “You may rise!” said he, and I did so from my bowing posture. “My name is Thomas Larkin” he began. “And for decades now, I have served the High King. I have seen many men and women come and go through the lands, but never before have I beheld a petty princess with all her entourage, come hither to so gray and forlorn a place as this. Your name precedes you, Princess Ceres, but alas not your purpose! Do enlighten me.” And so I attempted to explain to him my reasons for coming here at this time, and my father’s reasons for sending me as much as I could fathom them. Thomas regarded me strangely, when I mentioned my having felt “called” northward, and then a look of great alarm seemed to break out upon his hitherto unreadable face. “Did you know, that the last time a noblewoman was called northward, it was the time of the legendary Queen Erin, she who became known as the Wolf Mother, and who did great and terrible things after her sojourn in these parts. She was said to have spend time in the wild lands beyond this fort, and there she was changed. Will you be changed: by your stay here, Princess Ceres? I wonder!” And something about the way the old man said that and licked his lips as he did so disturbed me. He started at my bosom and oft I saw his eyes fall squarely between my legs. He was clearly a perverted old man, and I wanted to strike him but dared not. “May I go now?” I asked, bowing once again, hand over heart. “Aye!” he proclaimed. “You may go about your business. I have no power to hold you from it, for I am merely a guest here, and have no power outside of my capacity as voice of the High King in certain matters of state… matters your journey does not concern. Be grateful of that, woman!” And he spat that last word.
“What a hateful and detestable man!” I complained to my servant as we walked along the walls of the fort, taking in the view of the northlands from that vantage. I felt almost violated merely by having had to share the same room with him for but that brief visit. I was trying to put all thought of him far from my mind at present. “These lands are not as I dreamed of them.” I muttered, and my servant replied, in his ever-strange accent: “Milady, that is because reality so rarely lives up to the fantasy of dreams! Behold, for this… in all its’ stark glory… is the north as it truly is.” And it was so simple, and at the same time so very true! This… for better or for worse… was my destination. “Is there a tower nearby here? A place that once was a great library in another age, mayhap!” I asked, and my servant replied: “Aye, you speak of the Tome Tower, as it is called by the local tribes. It is safe enough to visit without an armed contingent. When would you like to depart?” And I gave my consent for us to depart as soon as possible, since the day was still young. We had slept in the wagon for bit on the way, when night fell, and had much energy for what might lie ahead for us. I cast back the hood of my cloak and removed the ribbon from my hair, letting the wind blow the raven black tresses wildly about my face. “You are beautiful, milady!” said the servant, and something about the way he said that struck me as almost love-struck. “Thank you!” I said, giggling a bit. I was almost in my fortieth year, but many men found me beautiful and oft said that I looked quite young for my age. Some loved me, others lusted after me, but I gave myself to none of them. I was no virgin, to be sure… but I was no harlot either. “Let us journey to the Tome Tower.” I said flatly, and my servant made ready to show me to the paths that led hither. We descended stairways from the walls of the fort, passed several checkpoints and guard posts, all of which had let us pass. This was peacetime, so there were no restrictions on travel… and I was a princess, so I had certain rights and privileges, however limited by the patriarchal governing bodies of the land those might have been. My servant guided me on a long and winding trek down many roads, paths, and secret trails. Ever we went upward, into the hills northwest of the tall fort and its’ high walls… and soon I could see a large square stone tower with a peaked wooden roof. The Tome Tower.
The entrance was like a black maw, and were it not for my servant having brought torches we would surely have been in utter darkness when we entered the tower, even in broad daylight. For there were no windows to be seen! The walls of the tower were covered in book and scroll shelves, practically lined with them from floor to ceiling. The writings all seemed to be in different languages collected from all over the known world. “Whom did this tower once belong to?” I asked, and my servant replied: “No one knows! It has always stood here, untouched and unmolested for as far back as anyone can ever recall. It is said that to remove even a single tome from this tower is to invoke the wrath of the gods… so no one risks it.” And so I dared take none of the writings with me. I read through some that I could understand, gazed upon others, but was not moved to take any of them, for I feared the gods’ wrath greatly. “I saw this place in my dreams, many times.” I intoned, and I felt as if I was walking in one of my dreams even then. My servant and I ascended some old stone stairways covered with cracked wooden planks, and we went up several stories until we reached the top floor of the tower, which had the only window in the entire structure, one looking out eastward, upon distant mountains and forests. “I have been here before in another life!” I exclaimed. And then I saw a statue of a woman whose features were identical to my own. A faded old silver plaque at the statue’s base read: “Queen Erin, the Wolf Mother” and then I knew I had been she. I had suspected it for some time, but seeing that statue confirmed it at long last. My servant noticed the same resemblance and came to the exact same conclusion that I did. He bowed low. “My Queen!” he declared. I turned to look out the window, and at that exact moment I felt my servant’s breath on my neck behind me. He whispered into my ear, licking my earlobe, saying: “I have always loved you! But now… I must have you.” And he reached his hands around my front, cupping my breasts and giving them a playful squeeze. I gasped, not expecting this but not fighting it either. I would let him take me! I had not had a man in some time, and this man would do as well as any other. The torches blew out, and when I turned around to look into my servant-lover’s face, I could but barely make out his features in the faint gray light that passed for day in this land.
Part Three: The Wolf Returns
He took me upon that highest floor of the tower, my fur cloak laid out beneath me. He removed my clothes with care, and he was a tender and gentle lover, taking his time with me. But once he was inside me, his manhood hard and pulsing within me, he was wild and rough more even than the wildest barbarian could be. And I had my share of those, in my time! He ravished me, I think, though I let him. “Tell me your name!” I begged of him as a couple hours passed of our intercourse and I neared the climax of love. But he said nothing, continuing to move in and out of me, caressing and kissing as he did so. He face was smooth and clean-shaven as a maiden’s… I could not make out his features in the gloom, but I could feel them against my skin as he claimed me. His grunts and sighs increased: as did my wild moans and shrieks. I was panting, and he was sweating and breathing heavily. Soon, I felt my wetness pour forth, in time for him to squirt his precious warmth up inside of me. I allowed myself a slight scream of surprise and joy, and I ran my fingers through my lover’s hair even as he gripped my arms tightly and did thrust several more times roughly, to drive more of his warmth into me. I was barren, and could not conceive a child, so I was not fearful of anything coming from this. I had lain with hundreds of men over the years! And naught ever came from those moments of pleasurable sport. I could hear a hawk outside, and soon my lover withdrew from me and rose to his feet, adjusting his robes with care. I dressed myself, for he had stripped me quite naked, and once I was dressed once again I took out a flint and re-lit the torches, taking one into my hand and passing the other to my lover. And it was then I noticed his face without the hood. I gasped and screamed! For it was the face of none other than my adopted brother Landon. “Oh my gods, Landon!” I shrieked. “How! Why?” And he smiled kindly, then said: “I have loved you ever since father first took me in, when we were both children. We share no blood! So where is the harm in having a little fun, just between us, my sweet sister?” But oh, we had shared far more than fun that day! “Landon!” I kept screaming his name, spitting it at him like a snake. I wanted to strike him, and actually slapped him thrice. Then I laughed, giggled, and found myself kissing him passionately upon the mouth. “Let us go, sister!” he said, and we journeyed hence.
What had the Wolf Mother been like, when she lived? Landon told me the history books he had read long ago made him think of me whenever he had heard that title, and that was prior to the revelation that I was she, reincarnated. She… I… had been a great woman and a great and terrible ruler of the lands in a time before the rise of the Line of Kings. It was said that the Line of Kings began when the patriarchs of the kingdoms got together and decided they no longer wished for rule under a theocratic matriarch who claimed to speak for the gods. That led to a great rebellion in which the Wolf Mother (so the history Landon told me said) fought against an alliance of twenty kings and managed to vanquish all of them save four. The four kings: who remained, called upon dragons and giants to aid them, but the Wolf Mother called upon the greatest dragon of them all, the Cold Drake of the northlands. And when she called upon that magnificent beast, all the tribes of the north bowed to her will and rallied to her cause. She was the rightful ruler of all the lands, and the kings were upstarts at best… traitors and thieves at worst. The Cold Drake engaged in battle against the dragons of the kings, and all of those great and noble creatures perished, including the Drake itself, in a fiery battle high over the northern mountains. Meanwhile, the northern tribes vanquished the giants but at terrible cost to their own people. Only fourteen of their chieftains remained, out of the hundreds who had rallied to their Mother’s side. Those fourteen were forced into exile by the victorious four kings, who had only won because of their having employed the giants as their servants. The Wolf Mother faced the four kings, and managed to hold her own against them with just her own people and their armies to aid her. In the end, they could not slay her, but they did defeat her. She was forced to marry one of the kings, who then had been named the High King, and so the Line of Kings was established. When she died, the Wolf Mother was taken to the northlands, and her body was given into the care of the tribes who had loved her best. They buried her beneath a great mountain, in a tomb carved into it by their ancestors, reserved for a goddess whom prophecy said would be born on the very day the Wolf Mother had been born. Yet that same prophecy said she would return, and so I did return, and would again. It was fated!
When I emerged from the Tome Tower, I was no longer Princess Ceres but Queen Erin the Wolf Mother. When I came back to the fort, my brother Landon and I took command of it in father’s name and our first act as commanders of the old fort was to order the execution of the High King’s seneschal, whom we caught in the act of raping a young girl who had been assigned to clean his chambers. We sent his skull back to the High King, with a letter detailing his atrocious conduct. “It would be more honorable to your highness’s house, and so speak better of the honor of all these lands, were you to seek to employ men of nobler character… not merely beasts of noble blood.” That is how I finished the letter I wrote. And so we waited for many months after that, to see what the High King’s response to our actions would be. Some said what I did was treason, whilst others called it true justice. Half the land, we would learn, sided with the High King, who called me a traitor… and the other half of the land, my father’s minor kingdom included, proclaimed that I was acting with honor and that I should seek to depose the corrupt High King and take his place on the throne of all the lands. So was civil war made to come to the lands, and so the Wolf Mother began to rally her forces. I would howl, and I would try to seize the great throne if I could! In the end, however, the civil war claimed many lives on both sides and nearly tore all the country apart. Evils were committed regardless of whose fealty was owed to whom… and I did my share of bloody deeds before at last the High King relented and admitted to his own corruption. He vowed to become a better man, but only on the singular condition that I become his wife! For he had no High Queen to rule at his side, and I had proven myself to be his equal. All of the wild northern tribes, even the barbarian ones, had flocked to my banner and the Age of the Dragon had come indeed as foretold in ancient prophecies. When I came to the great city of the High King, with the hordes of the north behind me, I came not to conquer however, but to give myself in marriage to the High King himself. He would get no heir from me, for I was barren… and so my brother Landon would inherit the title of High Prince. My sister Karin was stuck managing affairs back at father’s palace, and would likely die an old maid. But, I would go down in legend… as the Wolf Mother reborn!
But the High King did not realize that every wolf has teeth and claws! He had been a handsome enough man, with pale hair and even paler skin, with gray steely eyes and fine features… but I never loved him, never truly. My ambition had always been to take his throne and dispose of him… and so, seven years following our wedding night I ordered Landon to poison the High King’s wine cup. One night, as we made love, I brought the cup to the King’s lips and bade him drink. He was all too eager, and so sealed his own doom. He took sick that evening, and was dead by first light… having spent the last of his body’s energy in bed with me. His last sight was of my face smiling as I looked down upon him. “My brother will be High King now at my side!” I declared, and I saw my victim attempt to mutter something, but his lips quivered too much, and so he could not form even a word. So passed the High King, and my too-sweet, innocent, loyal Landon… my brother and my lover… succeeded him, for he had been named the next male heir to the High King’s throne. But dear Landon was merely content to be in my shadow, always, and so he was a puppet, whilst I was at long last the true power of all the lands. High Queen Ceres! My loyal northern lieutenants became the new Royal Guard, and so the shadow of the north fell upon every kingdom, and the Age of the Dragon became one of frost and flame. For though the power of the chill north grew, my heart was hot and passionate, some said mad, and my fire could not be tamed. Father came to court one day, and bowed low before my throne, declaring with tears in his eyes: “You have changed, my daughter!” and I looked at him coldly, and said: “No, father! It is these times, which have changed to accommodate me. I have not changed to accommodate these times.” He left my presence, and returned to his own lands. I never saw him again. Landon became: my husband, and so began an odd dynastic tradition where for several ages the nobility would intermarry within their own families. This had been done in the southern lands since time immemorial anyway! But though I loved the Great Palace and its’ myriad splendors… there would always be a special charm to that lonely tower where my adopted brother and I had consummated our love for the first time. Where he claimed me, and I let him! Like all wolves, I was a wild creature at heart. And oh, how I could howl!
A fantasy fiction based in part on some of my past-life memories…
“When the Wolf Mother returns,
The winds of the north shall howl!
When the long Line of Kings burns,
The gods themselves shall scowl.
An exiled prince, a bastard named,
Shall with his sister forge a dynasty!
No blood between them to be shamed.
It is she who will inherit the nobility!”
--- From the Forgotten Prophecies of the Northlands
Part One: The Journey North
The lands of the far north were not a welcoming domain to strangers, wanderers, or idle passers-by who might be on some errand or journey across the old roads that crisscrossed the length and breadth of the minor kingdoms that lay spread out under the banner of the High King like a wanton whore’s legs for her lover of the moment. If these kingdoms played the harlot, the King played the whore’s master with hungry relish. I remember that I grew up hearing tales of his oppressive and sometimes rather perverse tactics of rule, and in my heart I hated him with all the fire in my breast. But like all good sluts, I had to submit to my master’s whims and wishes in order that I might remain free to practice my trade. My particular trade was that of a princess born to a noble house, one of the minor kingdoms. My home was not in the northlands but the tales I heard my father often tell of them captured my imagination like naught else could. He told of hard and hardy people who some called barbarians and wild folk, and whom legend had distorted beyond all semblance of their true reality. It was said of them that they lived in lands of ice and eternal winter, wearing cloaks of wolves and bears. Their women were said to be fair-haired and that they had skin so white that you could not distinguish them from the whiteness of northern snow. In my childish mind, I suppose I likened them to fey sprits or some such. My own hair was raven black in color, as was that of most of the women in my family, as had been father’s hair before it turned gray as autumn fog. But the old gray wolf had a fondness for his tales, and I had a fondness for listening to them on lonely nights. The weather of the north was said to be far beyond the severest winters of our lands, and their summer was as cold as our coldest autumn. At best! At worst, it was said to be like a mild winter. I could not even imagine the frigidity of what their winters must be like! Yet I had some perverse longing to go and see that place. I knew not why, but the north called to me. Something was there that I knew I had to discover… perhaps something of myself that I needed to learn. But I knew the land would not care. The land never cared for aught but itself. For nature is capricious and cruel sometimes… yet fair to those with a will to conquer and to survive. I possessed such a will, from the earliest days of my girlhood. But until maturity, I had no idea how to embrace it.
It was not my custom to travel to such a distant land, unless ambition called me hither. I was a woman of proud and noble bearing, one used to silken gowns and the comforts of the palace. But for as far back as my girlhood, I could remember in truth how much I hated being confined even in so gilded a cage. I longed to be free, and so I had oft fantasized about what it might be like to make a journey either northward or southward, though I never gave other directions much thought. This kingdom, which I had been born into, was situated between other lands, and my father had oft told me of the wonders of the white lands beyond the north, or the hot, tropical lands of the south. Why I had not, on this occasion, chosen to journey southward, I doubt the ancient gods could even know. Something simply called me! And so, my father bade me go, in the company of a family servant, to the north. The servant was a quiet man, hooded, and wearing the royal robes of his office. The red sigil of our house, with black raven emblazoned upon it, was embroidered upon the front of his robes, and oft I had a mind to suspect there was something familiar about him… though I never pressed him to tell me of himself overmuch. His voice was familiar too, but I could not place it for he spoke with a slightly strange accent that I assumed was eastern. The gods can be cruel though! And as we rode in the royal caravan bound for our far destination, I had begun to wonder if the journey would ever end. The landscape we rode through was bleak, and the air grew ever more chill the farther north we went. I was dressed reasonably enough for the weather! I wore a pair of baggy red pantaloons, a loose blouse with long, billowing sleeves, and a warm leather vest over that. My booted feet were ready in case we should need to walk… and a black hooded fur cloak kept me warm when at least I began to spy snow upon the horizon. My long black hair was tied back with a gray ribbon, and as I looked out the windows of the wooden wagon I oft played with strands of it, just twirling the stands between my fingers, as I scanned the landscape before me. This was wild country, not a place for the daughter of a noble house! And yet, something had always called me hither. I was about to discover what that was… but a part of me longed for the palace, and for father’s reassuring voice. Rather than a cold land and even colder company!
I was not, perhaps a beautiful woman. I had a rather large nose, rather thin lips, and rather elfin features with high and haughty cheekbones and a small chin. My shape was slender, but not the hourglass figure of voluptuous women. Rather, I was sleek, slender, and slim as a jungle panther. All the women in my family looked thus, and it was whispered we had Faerie blood in our veins from some distant ancestors who came to these lands from somewhere in the east long ago, when history was young and the Line of Kings was still young as well. It was said we had been blood descendants of a bloodline of minor queens and kings who had been exiled for having loyalties to Queen Erin, the Wolf Mother of legend. I never did know what exactly that meant when I was growing up, but I was oft told that my mannerisms were like unto Erin’s. Or like how Erin’s were said to have been anyway! I hated having the feeling that I resembled father too much, for as I said I did not myself think that I was beautiful, though some told me they found me to be so. My breasts always seemed on the tiny side rather than voluptuous as most men prefer, and very oft I recall that when we were most alone and lonely my adopted brother would occasionally steal chances to touch and feel them through my garments while pinning me to a wall or to the bed in my chambers, and all the while pressing his hard manhood against me, yet never once daring to partake of me with it. I asked him why he actually preferred my breasts to those of far more: well-endowed women, and he said it was merely something about me and my body that made him desire to do so. He never really elaborated on it beyond that. Though I was not beautiful as such, I was perhaps simply a convenient way for him to explore a woman’s body when a prostitute or a lover could not be gotten. Once he even dared to expose my breasts, and plant his lips upon them… but he did nothing more to me beyond that! I never resisted him either. Something about his forbidden kisses and secret molestations of me made me excited rather than repelled. He was a handsome young man, and knew how to make me long for him in ways I could not speak aloud to father. Or to anyone! I had not seen him since he departed on some errand of his own to the north, and part of me missed his rather… amorous… attentions. I thought of him much, on that long journey northward!
He has been adopted into our family from another lineage, but one no one spoke of. The current High King was about the age he would be now as an adult, and their features resembled one another’s strongly. I wondered it mayhap my adopted brother was not in fact a blood brother to the High King himself! For there was a rumor whispered in certain taverns and inns by the common folk on cold winter nights… and that rumor said the previous High King was murdered by his wife, who then was poisoned by the King’s Seneschal to cover up the fact that the King had raped a virgin priestess of the gods, which was an unpardonable crime even for the High King to commit, and one punishable by public disgrace followed by an equally public execution by beheading. The old Seneschal then took the legitimate heir and raised him to be the High King who now reined over all the lands. But the child born to the virgin who had been raped… that bastard brother to the man now sitting upon the greatest throne in all the kingdoms… he was forced into exile under pain of death to his mother and all her living kin should they not flee. I remember once, when my adopted brother first came to live with us, that the woman who brought him wore a priestess’s gown and had the shaved head of a member of the holy orders of the gods. For me, this had always felt like too much of a coincidence though to save my “brother’s” life I never once spoke of it to anyone. My father never spoke of it either! And what ever became of the priestess, no one knows. She rode south, and was never heard from again in civilized lands. But should anything ever happen to the current High King, would not brother then stand to inherit the throne if the truth of his true parentage be revealed? Alas, no! For no bastard had ever been allowed to sit on the High King’s throne. But I always longed to see brother there, rather than the arrogant monster that reigned now. Yet, in his attentions towards me, was not the exiled High Prince much like his father had been towards the priestess he had taken by force? Though I never denied him his sport, still brother never once asked me for my consent. Should the means ever come to me, to place him upon the High King’s throne, I would need to find a way to keep him under control, lest he grow to be like his father and become a tyrant. I mused on such matters, during the longest and dullest parts of the trip north.
Part Two: The Tome Tower
The sun was warm upon my skin as I climbed from the back of the wagon and surveyed the wooden fort’s walls that lay before us. This was the place where father kept a garrison of his strongest and proudest warriors! They defended this old fort from threats of the wild, and it was said that none of the northern barbarians ever once passed its’ walls. Only their heads, but never their warriors! And I saw many of the severed heads and skulls of those enemies… mounted upon tall wooden stakes… as I, and my party, walked up the road towards the tall stockade on the hill. Walls ran from it to the west and to the east for as far as my eyes could see. Men patrolled the tops of those walks, carrying great spears and blades in their hands. Pennants and banners decorated the walls, seemingly the only finery here. My companion, the hooded servant, kept reminding me that there were as many women serving in this garrison as men, something unusual in these lands. Did my father honor my gender so highly? Oh, aye! For mother had been a great warrior queen before her death, and it was said that my own fiery temperament came from her. I was my father’s “Young Dragon” as he called me, though mother had been called the “Golden Lion” in her time. With mother’s death, the Age of the Lion ended and now was begun the Age of the Dragon. My time. I was to be queen myself one day, but before the hour to take a husband would arrive, I made up my mind that I would see something of the world and do great things, gods willing. It was decided that, should aught befall me, my elder sister Karin would inherit the throne. She could even function as regent during times I might wish to go abroad… though I hated how distant she often was, and how we never spoke much anymore. Unlike the days of our girlhood, when we would play outside in the King’s Gardens and imagine we were on grand adventures! Do girls often dream of such mad adventures? I know not, I know only that we did. But it was I, who inherited mother’s wanderlust… and so it was this that I suspect fated me to come to such a barren domain chasing a dream. My servant mentioned to me that on this day of the year, the King’s Seneschal was staying in the fort’s State Rooms. I could almost picture the old fop sitting at a desk, quill in hand, penning some missive in the King’s name. The High King’s name! I always imagined the Seneschal to be a total fool.
I was escorted to meet this fool, upon our arrival, since it was customary for a noble daughter, a princess of a minor king, to pay fealty to an emissary of that greater High King who ruled over all these lands. I saw he was very much an old fop, the Seneschal. Balding gray head, ferret-like features… a thin white mustache… he was a threatening looking fellow, to be sure! But a fop and a fool nonetheless… who dressed in colorful motley more suited to a jester than a nobleman in the very confidence of the ruler of all the lands. I bowed before him, and placed my right hand over my heart in the most traditional greeting of a noblewoman to a great lord. “You may rise!” said he, and I did so from my bowing posture. “My name is Thomas Larkin” he began. “And for decades now, I have served the High King. I have seen many men and women come and go through the lands, but never before have I beheld a petty princess with all her entourage, come hither to so gray and forlorn a place as this. Your name precedes you, Princess Ceres, but alas not your purpose! Do enlighten me.” And so I attempted to explain to him my reasons for coming here at this time, and my father’s reasons for sending me as much as I could fathom them. Thomas regarded me strangely, when I mentioned my having felt “called” northward, and then a look of great alarm seemed to break out upon his hitherto unreadable face. “Did you know, that the last time a noblewoman was called northward, it was the time of the legendary Queen Erin, she who became known as the Wolf Mother, and who did great and terrible things after her sojourn in these parts. She was said to have spend time in the wild lands beyond this fort, and there she was changed. Will you be changed: by your stay here, Princess Ceres? I wonder!” And something about the way the old man said that and licked his lips as he did so disturbed me. He started at my bosom and oft I saw his eyes fall squarely between my legs. He was clearly a perverted old man, and I wanted to strike him but dared not. “May I go now?” I asked, bowing once again, hand over heart. “Aye!” he proclaimed. “You may go about your business. I have no power to hold you from it, for I am merely a guest here, and have no power outside of my capacity as voice of the High King in certain matters of state… matters your journey does not concern. Be grateful of that, woman!” And he spat that last word.
“What a hateful and detestable man!” I complained to my servant as we walked along the walls of the fort, taking in the view of the northlands from that vantage. I felt almost violated merely by having had to share the same room with him for but that brief visit. I was trying to put all thought of him far from my mind at present. “These lands are not as I dreamed of them.” I muttered, and my servant replied, in his ever-strange accent: “Milady, that is because reality so rarely lives up to the fantasy of dreams! Behold, for this… in all its’ stark glory… is the north as it truly is.” And it was so simple, and at the same time so very true! This… for better or for worse… was my destination. “Is there a tower nearby here? A place that once was a great library in another age, mayhap!” I asked, and my servant replied: “Aye, you speak of the Tome Tower, as it is called by the local tribes. It is safe enough to visit without an armed contingent. When would you like to depart?” And I gave my consent for us to depart as soon as possible, since the day was still young. We had slept in the wagon for bit on the way, when night fell, and had much energy for what might lie ahead for us. I cast back the hood of my cloak and removed the ribbon from my hair, letting the wind blow the raven black tresses wildly about my face. “You are beautiful, milady!” said the servant, and something about the way he said that struck me as almost love-struck. “Thank you!” I said, giggling a bit. I was almost in my fortieth year, but many men found me beautiful and oft said that I looked quite young for my age. Some loved me, others lusted after me, but I gave myself to none of them. I was no virgin, to be sure… but I was no harlot either. “Let us journey to the Tome Tower.” I said flatly, and my servant made ready to show me to the paths that led hither. We descended stairways from the walls of the fort, passed several checkpoints and guard posts, all of which had let us pass. This was peacetime, so there were no restrictions on travel… and I was a princess, so I had certain rights and privileges, however limited by the patriarchal governing bodies of the land those might have been. My servant guided me on a long and winding trek down many roads, paths, and secret trails. Ever we went upward, into the hills northwest of the tall fort and its’ high walls… and soon I could see a large square stone tower with a peaked wooden roof. The Tome Tower.
The entrance was like a black maw, and were it not for my servant having brought torches we would surely have been in utter darkness when we entered the tower, even in broad daylight. For there were no windows to be seen! The walls of the tower were covered in book and scroll shelves, practically lined with them from floor to ceiling. The writings all seemed to be in different languages collected from all over the known world. “Whom did this tower once belong to?” I asked, and my servant replied: “No one knows! It has always stood here, untouched and unmolested for as far back as anyone can ever recall. It is said that to remove even a single tome from this tower is to invoke the wrath of the gods… so no one risks it.” And so I dared take none of the writings with me. I read through some that I could understand, gazed upon others, but was not moved to take any of them, for I feared the gods’ wrath greatly. “I saw this place in my dreams, many times.” I intoned, and I felt as if I was walking in one of my dreams even then. My servant and I ascended some old stone stairways covered with cracked wooden planks, and we went up several stories until we reached the top floor of the tower, which had the only window in the entire structure, one looking out eastward, upon distant mountains and forests. “I have been here before in another life!” I exclaimed. And then I saw a statue of a woman whose features were identical to my own. A faded old silver plaque at the statue’s base read: “Queen Erin, the Wolf Mother” and then I knew I had been she. I had suspected it for some time, but seeing that statue confirmed it at long last. My servant noticed the same resemblance and came to the exact same conclusion that I did. He bowed low. “My Queen!” he declared. I turned to look out the window, and at that exact moment I felt my servant’s breath on my neck behind me. He whispered into my ear, licking my earlobe, saying: “I have always loved you! But now… I must have you.” And he reached his hands around my front, cupping my breasts and giving them a playful squeeze. I gasped, not expecting this but not fighting it either. I would let him take me! I had not had a man in some time, and this man would do as well as any other. The torches blew out, and when I turned around to look into my servant-lover’s face, I could but barely make out his features in the faint gray light that passed for day in this land.
Part Three: The Wolf Returns
He took me upon that highest floor of the tower, my fur cloak laid out beneath me. He removed my clothes with care, and he was a tender and gentle lover, taking his time with me. But once he was inside me, his manhood hard and pulsing within me, he was wild and rough more even than the wildest barbarian could be. And I had my share of those, in my time! He ravished me, I think, though I let him. “Tell me your name!” I begged of him as a couple hours passed of our intercourse and I neared the climax of love. But he said nothing, continuing to move in and out of me, caressing and kissing as he did so. He face was smooth and clean-shaven as a maiden’s… I could not make out his features in the gloom, but I could feel them against my skin as he claimed me. His grunts and sighs increased: as did my wild moans and shrieks. I was panting, and he was sweating and breathing heavily. Soon, I felt my wetness pour forth, in time for him to squirt his precious warmth up inside of me. I allowed myself a slight scream of surprise and joy, and I ran my fingers through my lover’s hair even as he gripped my arms tightly and did thrust several more times roughly, to drive more of his warmth into me. I was barren, and could not conceive a child, so I was not fearful of anything coming from this. I had lain with hundreds of men over the years! And naught ever came from those moments of pleasurable sport. I could hear a hawk outside, and soon my lover withdrew from me and rose to his feet, adjusting his robes with care. I dressed myself, for he had stripped me quite naked, and once I was dressed once again I took out a flint and re-lit the torches, taking one into my hand and passing the other to my lover. And it was then I noticed his face without the hood. I gasped and screamed! For it was the face of none other than my adopted brother Landon. “Oh my gods, Landon!” I shrieked. “How! Why?” And he smiled kindly, then said: “I have loved you ever since father first took me in, when we were both children. We share no blood! So where is the harm in having a little fun, just between us, my sweet sister?” But oh, we had shared far more than fun that day! “Landon!” I kept screaming his name, spitting it at him like a snake. I wanted to strike him, and actually slapped him thrice. Then I laughed, giggled, and found myself kissing him passionately upon the mouth. “Let us go, sister!” he said, and we journeyed hence.
What had the Wolf Mother been like, when she lived? Landon told me the history books he had read long ago made him think of me whenever he had heard that title, and that was prior to the revelation that I was she, reincarnated. She… I… had been a great woman and a great and terrible ruler of the lands in a time before the rise of the Line of Kings. It was said that the Line of Kings began when the patriarchs of the kingdoms got together and decided they no longer wished for rule under a theocratic matriarch who claimed to speak for the gods. That led to a great rebellion in which the Wolf Mother (so the history Landon told me said) fought against an alliance of twenty kings and managed to vanquish all of them save four. The four kings: who remained, called upon dragons and giants to aid them, but the Wolf Mother called upon the greatest dragon of them all, the Cold Drake of the northlands. And when she called upon that magnificent beast, all the tribes of the north bowed to her will and rallied to her cause. She was the rightful ruler of all the lands, and the kings were upstarts at best… traitors and thieves at worst. The Cold Drake engaged in battle against the dragons of the kings, and all of those great and noble creatures perished, including the Drake itself, in a fiery battle high over the northern mountains. Meanwhile, the northern tribes vanquished the giants but at terrible cost to their own people. Only fourteen of their chieftains remained, out of the hundreds who had rallied to their Mother’s side. Those fourteen were forced into exile by the victorious four kings, who had only won because of their having employed the giants as their servants. The Wolf Mother faced the four kings, and managed to hold her own against them with just her own people and their armies to aid her. In the end, they could not slay her, but they did defeat her. She was forced to marry one of the kings, who then had been named the High King, and so the Line of Kings was established. When she died, the Wolf Mother was taken to the northlands, and her body was given into the care of the tribes who had loved her best. They buried her beneath a great mountain, in a tomb carved into it by their ancestors, reserved for a goddess whom prophecy said would be born on the very day the Wolf Mother had been born. Yet that same prophecy said she would return, and so I did return, and would again. It was fated!
When I emerged from the Tome Tower, I was no longer Princess Ceres but Queen Erin the Wolf Mother. When I came back to the fort, my brother Landon and I took command of it in father’s name and our first act as commanders of the old fort was to order the execution of the High King’s seneschal, whom we caught in the act of raping a young girl who had been assigned to clean his chambers. We sent his skull back to the High King, with a letter detailing his atrocious conduct. “It would be more honorable to your highness’s house, and so speak better of the honor of all these lands, were you to seek to employ men of nobler character… not merely beasts of noble blood.” That is how I finished the letter I wrote. And so we waited for many months after that, to see what the High King’s response to our actions would be. Some said what I did was treason, whilst others called it true justice. Half the land, we would learn, sided with the High King, who called me a traitor… and the other half of the land, my father’s minor kingdom included, proclaimed that I was acting with honor and that I should seek to depose the corrupt High King and take his place on the throne of all the lands. So was civil war made to come to the lands, and so the Wolf Mother began to rally her forces. I would howl, and I would try to seize the great throne if I could! In the end, however, the civil war claimed many lives on both sides and nearly tore all the country apart. Evils were committed regardless of whose fealty was owed to whom… and I did my share of bloody deeds before at last the High King relented and admitted to his own corruption. He vowed to become a better man, but only on the singular condition that I become his wife! For he had no High Queen to rule at his side, and I had proven myself to be his equal. All of the wild northern tribes, even the barbarian ones, had flocked to my banner and the Age of the Dragon had come indeed as foretold in ancient prophecies. When I came to the great city of the High King, with the hordes of the north behind me, I came not to conquer however, but to give myself in marriage to the High King himself. He would get no heir from me, for I was barren… and so my brother Landon would inherit the title of High Prince. My sister Karin was stuck managing affairs back at father’s palace, and would likely die an old maid. But, I would go down in legend… as the Wolf Mother reborn!
But the High King did not realize that every wolf has teeth and claws! He had been a handsome enough man, with pale hair and even paler skin, with gray steely eyes and fine features… but I never loved him, never truly. My ambition had always been to take his throne and dispose of him… and so, seven years following our wedding night I ordered Landon to poison the High King’s wine cup. One night, as we made love, I brought the cup to the King’s lips and bade him drink. He was all too eager, and so sealed his own doom. He took sick that evening, and was dead by first light… having spent the last of his body’s energy in bed with me. His last sight was of my face smiling as I looked down upon him. “My brother will be High King now at my side!” I declared, and I saw my victim attempt to mutter something, but his lips quivered too much, and so he could not form even a word. So passed the High King, and my too-sweet, innocent, loyal Landon… my brother and my lover… succeeded him, for he had been named the next male heir to the High King’s throne. But dear Landon was merely content to be in my shadow, always, and so he was a puppet, whilst I was at long last the true power of all the lands. High Queen Ceres! My loyal northern lieutenants became the new Royal Guard, and so the shadow of the north fell upon every kingdom, and the Age of the Dragon became one of frost and flame. For though the power of the chill north grew, my heart was hot and passionate, some said mad, and my fire could not be tamed. Father came to court one day, and bowed low before my throne, declaring with tears in his eyes: “You have changed, my daughter!” and I looked at him coldly, and said: “No, father! It is these times, which have changed to accommodate me. I have not changed to accommodate these times.” He left my presence, and returned to his own lands. I never saw him again. Landon became: my husband, and so began an odd dynastic tradition where for several ages the nobility would intermarry within their own families. This had been done in the southern lands since time immemorial anyway! But though I loved the Great Palace and its’ myriad splendors… there would always be a special charm to that lonely tower where my adopted brother and I had consummated our love for the first time. Where he claimed me, and I let him! Like all wolves, I was a wild creature at heart. And oh, how I could howl!
Published 16th Feb 2013
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