FOX09T Book 1 Chapter 4

FO9T Book 1 Chapter 4

The storm clouds, their frightening thunderheads pillaring and expanding by the moment, continued to darken and deepen and spread across the skies above the endless grasslands plains. So this is the right spot, thought Elrik, as he accelerated his flight speed, his wings now become invisible from the furious velocity of their thrashing.  He had to be in perfect position to observe the “event!”  For Elrik was not just any garden-variety sprite.  He liked to think of himself as the Prince of the Sprites, maybe even the King!  Surely he deserved the crown, he thought, as he was by far the most inventively mischievous of all Foxwood’s sprites.  And fully 93% of all gossip in the Kingdom (it had been affirmed by a specially appointed committee) had its origin in Elrik the Sprite’s nefarious spying.  But this might just be the gossip-gathering mission to end all missions!  The geographic coordinates pinpointing what Elrik had heard the Grand Oracle Fox himself whisper to be “a disturbance of cataclysmic historic proportions!” – the spot Elrik now raced toward – had been “gathered” whilst the daring sprite hovered just beneath the Grand Oracle Fox’s own dining room table in the elderly fox’s absolutely-off-limits-to-sprites-and-faeries deepest forest cottage.  What illustrious sprite but Elrik would ever dare such a thing?!
     The grains of “compass dust” Elrick had ingested began to burn hot in his belly as the winged elf, no bigger than the smallest hummingbird, dodged and darted through the broad blades of the tall grasses.  The enchanted dust was telling him that this was the place, but where exactly was this?  And what was he looking for?  So far there was only the impending thunderstorm.  Sprites rarely ventured this far out onto the Wolf Steppes, the lands of the Wolfen Folk, and for good reason…
     Whatever it was Elrik was about to discover, he knew, would be come across in the most sudden and startling manner.  So it was on the Wolf Steppes, a prairie frontier land of seemingly endless waves of grasses, hypnotic in its flatness and sameness, but hiding many secret dangers to trap and doom the unwary.  The Steppes encircled all the beautiful Kingdom of Foxwood like a protective barrier.  Whether the Steppes could even be considered a part of Foxwood was a question of great conjecture for the Grand Philosopher Fox and his fellows. Once out on the Steppes, it was as if one were castaway and rudderless on an endless ocean of flatlands, the dimensions of which had never been charted.  How far the most distant horizon?  Thousands of miles?  Tens of thousands?  And beyond that frontier: only the legends of “The Mists.”  But then, the traveler would step through yet another wall of the smothering grass, only to find himself tumbling down the sheer dug out wall of a massive Wolf’s Den, sunken a half mile down in the earth and several miles across in its basin.  A wolfpack of many hundreds of tribal brethren might live there in their earthen burrow homes.  Then again, sometimes the hidden dens were dug out only a dozen feet deep and a hundred feet across, home to only a lone wolf family.  Few of the Fox Folk, mostly special royal ambassadors, had ever seen the insides of the wolf’s dens.  Some were said to be as bare and Spartan as those lived in by history’s first cave dwellers, the Wolfen Folk preferring simplicity to complexity in most things, the wholly natural always over the factory produced.  But some Great Dens of the most important Wolfen Commanders and other leaders were rumored to be as magnificently crafted and designed and sumptuously appointed as would please a king residing in a great medieval castle.  Just how many wolfen folk and wolfen dens there were was any fox’s guess (and, oh!, how the foxes loved to speculate and guess!) – as was just how the dens were all “connected,” both in the sense of their political relationships but also in their actual physical connection: beneath the Wolf Steppes ran thousands of miles of connecting burrows and tunnels, with hundreds of hidden entrances and exits.  An intruder never knew when a legion of Wolfen Guards might spring up out of the earth as if by magic!  These thoughts crowded Elrik’s head, but he kept flying, resolved to find out a great secret this day!
     And then he found it: a shallow brackish bog, a pit of soggy peat the size of a small pond.  What a humble and  unlikely site for a “cataclysmic disturbance”!
     Elrik hovered under a wide blade of grass at the bog’s edge.  Even though he could sense no Wolfen presence with the sensitive antennae that served as his eyebrows, he was wary all the same.  He pressed close to the blade of grass and let his body “go green” as sprites, like chameleons, could do. But he couldn’t do anything about his bright red laser-point eyes, which were always a giveaway to those who suspected he was near.
     The wind howled as the great black storm clouds rolled over the bog, casting a deep shadow over Elrik and the blowing grasses.  Then the wall-cloud dropped to within a hundred feet of the ground below, and from the wall-cloud dropped the spinning tail of a newborn tornado, probing for a spot to touch down.  Elrick fought to stay aloft amidst the whirling vortex of winds that flattened the grasses surrounding the bog.  Just when the sprite decided that he must flee or die…
     It happened.  The Event.
     She fell from the mouth of the tornado’s funnel and into the center of the bog.
     And then the tornado lifted back up into the wall-cloud, and the wall-cloud lifted back up into the angry thundering storm clouds high above.  The storm still threatened, but the winds died down enough to be bearable.
     Elrik watched the intruder as she thrashed about a bit, as if disoriented, and rightly so!, in the slime of the bog, and then as she struggled up to stand on her two feet, still knee-deep in the bog water.
     Elrik’s first thought was that the intruder was very pretty, in fact, exceedingly and remarkably pretty.  But he also immediately sensed something not quite right in that spritely observation and assessment.  He had to get everything just right if he were to craft a really comprehensive and utterly captivating nugget of prize gossip to spread!  
     She stood well over five feet tall.  The muddy peat from the bog that now covered her looked like a stone plaster, making her look as if she were a newly scuplted statue – a statue of a goddess!  Yes, he was getting closer now!  This girl was shaped like a goddess.  So tall, so fit – and of broad hip, of slender waist, of full chest.  She wasn’t just really, really pretty.  She was … beautiful.  As the word struck him like a bolt of lightning, so too did he know by that brilliant flash the great secret, the “cataclysmically disturbing” revelation:  The intruder was not a girl, not a girl like the Visitors!
     The intruder was a woman!
     A fully grown woman intruder from the Other Side – in Foxwood!  The sprite began pinwheeling in the air in a fit of spritely delight.  Oh what a secret to know!  To know and then decide whom else shall know!  Then suddenly, it was time for the sprite to duck into hiding again, for he heard the pounding hooves of the heavy horses.  The Wolfen Guardians were coming.

     Elrik thought for a moment to stay to find out what might happen next, but his fear of the wolves overcame his lust for even greater gossip glory.  He had quite enough for one adventure!  He spun round and to begin his journey back to Foxwood, flying, specifically, on a beeline straight to Morgana’s mountainside lair.  Oh, what special sweets and powerful elixirs the Cat Queen would reward the brave sprite with when he divulged to her this most stunning information about this historic happening in the Kingdom! And best of all, this news would be reaching her before it reached the Princesses!  That’s when Morgana was always most generous in bestowing her rewards!  The giddy sprite almost crashed into a slow-flying night-owl at the very thought of it.  

     Once Dr. Gwendolyn Osgood’s head had cleared enough for her to think, she thought that a tornado must have come in the night as she and Larissa slept and carried away the entire clinic, leaving her standing in the mud of the building’s sub-basement foundation.  But before she could fear for Larissa, the sight of the encircling tall grasses convinced her that she must be dreaming.  Even though the cold and the wind and her own nausea seemed so very, very real.  Then she heard the thundering of the horses’ hooves, louder than the growing thunders of the black clouds above in the darkening sky.  If this is all just a crazy dream, she thought, then please let that be the calvary coming to rescue me. The hooves grew louder, and then Dr. Gwen could feel the actual vibration of the approaching horses shaking her legs as she stood in the bog.
     The grasses along the southern edge of the bog suddenly parted in seven spots in a perfect row, and the thundering sound was gone.  All was quiet, but for the rumblings in the storm clouds.
      First she beheld the line of fierce, battle-armored black stallions, snorting and pawing the ground at the bog’s edge.  She had never in her life encountered anything quite so intimidating…
      Until she then beheld the horsemen.
The mounted wolfmen studied her as intently as she stared back at them.  The three leather-clad riders to the left, and the three leather-clad riders to the right, would each look at her and then glance over to look at the mounted wolfman in the middle, as if seeking his guidance.  The wolfman in the middle looked only at her, never looking at the riders to the left or to the right.  He is the commander, thought Dr. Gwen, and a leader obviously in need of no one’s counsel other than his own.
     Then the wolfman dismounted and strode out into the bog toward her in a most purposeful manner.  Dr. Gwen was frozen in fear.  It was all happening so fast.  She put all her faith in the idea that, surely, it all had to be just a bad dream.
     As he got closer and closer, Gwen thought she could see some humanity, some compassion, in his blue eyes, a strange color for a wolf’s eyes to be.  And the way he stopped to stand before her in the bog, silently studying her face and giving her a chance to look at his, made her think that perhaps this was a rescue after all.  She even breathed a deep sigh of relief.
     Then he raised his stormtrooper boot out of the bog water and placed it on her belt buckle – and pushed her backward into the bog.  She sat there in a state of utter shock and confusion.  Then he was on top of her and he was grabbing for her belt buckle with his fearsome clawed hands!  It was a nightmare after all!  She had been brought here to be violated!, or worse!, killed!, or worse!, eaten!, by a blue-eyed werewolf!  He quickly had the belt buckle undone and tore the belt through the loops of her blue jeans. But then he did a strange thing.  He seemed to be smearing bog muck on the semi-precious gemstones she had spent a lifetime collecting and adorning her belt with.  The embedded stones well-muck-covered, he then coiled up the belt and shoved it inside a leather pouch attached to his own belt.  It occurred to her that he didn’t want his men (his wolfmen!) to see what he was doing.  So, she thought, you’re neither my hero nor my doom.  You’re just a cowardly thief.
     You might as well just kill me, thought Dr. Gwen, for that belt is the one thing I own for which I would give up all my other wordly possessions. How could such a cruelty be befalling me?       
     Oh, of course, she thought. Losing my beloved belt is my worst nightmare – so that proves this is all just a dream!
     And then she was aware that she was out of the bog water and cradled in one of the wolf commander’s arms like a baby.  She hadn’t even felt him lift her up.  He had to be monstrously strong.
     He pressed his furry cheek to hers.  She feared he might be about to bite off her ear.
     “Listen to my words and obey them. If you wish to survive.”
     He spoke!  Dr. Gwen felt both more reassured and more freaked out.
     “You have no idea how you got here.  Your mind is blank,” he said in deep, authoritative, yet calming voice.  That’s easy, she thought. I don’t have any idea how I got here and my mind is indeed blank.
     “And above all,” said the wolfman, “you are never to acknowledge the existence of that gemmed belt!”          
     The wolfman then strode out of the bog and mounted his steed, with Dr. Gwen still in arms, as easily as if she had been a handful of feathers.  Heavy raindrops began to fall and there was the crash of lightning striking very close by.  Dr. Gwen, nestled between the wolfman commander and the pommel of his horse’s saddle, felt as if she might soon be fainting, and welcoming it.
      “We ride for Athena!” cried the commander.
      His lieutenant spoke out.
      “Knight Nathaniel! Sir! We should shelter from this storm until morning!  Is it not too dangerous, if for not but the sake of our mounts, to ride through the lightning and darkness in this maelstrom?!”
      “Knight Nathaniel,” thought Dr. Gwen. It suits his blue eyes.
      “The command has its purpose, Lieutenant!” roared Knight Nathaniel, the Wolfen Commander. “Whatever sorcery this is, it must not be allowed to stain the Wolf Steppes with its foul rumor!  This matter must be securely in the hands of the Council of Princesses by morning – and be nothing more to do with the Wolfen Folk or associated with their land!  Is that understood?!”
       “Aye, aye, Sir!”
       And with that, the cavalry of seven wolfen horsemen were charging through the pitch black night, their phalanx of surging steeds lit up in moments by the most savage lightning strikes, followed by claps of thunder that sounded like the hammers of the gods tearing the heavens and the earth asunder.  The rain poured down in powerful stinging sheets, slapping at the riders, and their passenger, as if to drive them back.
       Dr. Gwen wasn’t sure how long she was going to be able to hold on in this escalating madness.  She looked up at her “savior,” the wolfman commander, Nathaniel, and caught his eyes, in the momentary illumination of a flash of lightning, looking back down into hers.  What she saw startled and confused her.  She was sure she detected in those blue wolfen eyes something that couldn’t possible exist there – a look of … fear.  What could such a powerful man-beast possibly ever have to fear? Did he fear for her?  Or was the look of fear for himself?  This was her last thought, of Knight Nathaniel’s worried blue eyes, as she fell away into swirling blackness, the thundering of the heavy horses’ hooves and the savage howls of the wolfen horsemen and the pounding of the storm-gods’ rain finally pummeling her frazzled senses into numb submission and a deep, deep sleep.