Along Came a Wolf (The Yellow Hoods, #1): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale

by Adam Dreece

  Tee smiled. “You know your name means wolf, right?”

  “Of course I know that,” he replied firmly. He found his hat and dusted it off.

  Tee leaned in. “And… you were just assaulted by the Cochon brothers,” she said, nodding knowingly.

  Andre looked about to see if any of his other belongings had fallen to the ground during the commotion. “Oh—was that their name?”

  Tee giggled.

  “What is it?” asked Andre, turning to her, annoyed.

  Tee pulled her hood over her face. “Nothing—it’s just, you know… never mind.” She finished her giggling and took a deep breath. “Okay—sorry. So, where are you trying to go?”

  Andre put his hat on and then straightened his mustache. “I am sorry. I appreciate your assistance, but it’s official business and I can’t say. Now, do you think I have any chance of finding my horse, or should I continue into town on foot?”

  Tee looked around to get her bearings. “I’m sure we can find her. She probably went over to the nearby clearing. This road leads there. It’s only about five minutes if we take the shortcut.”

  Bakon started to make noises and moved a hand to rub the back of his head.

  “We should go—now,” Tee whispered. She grabbed Andre by the hand and led him into the thick forest.

  At the door came a familiar coded knock. An old man’s heavily accented voice happily answered, “My, my. Someone is at the door. Who is it, I wonder?”

  “Me!” said the confident, high-pitched girl’s voice from outside.

  The short but well-built man scratched his bald head. “Hmm, me? I seem to be in here, though. You must be you, yes? So, who is you?” he asked, chuckling.

  “It’s me!” Girlish giggles followed.

  The old man rubbed his short salt-and-pepper beard in pretend bewilderment. “Well, well, well… this is quite a predicament. I seem to be both inside and outside. Hmm, I will need to think about this as I drink my coffee, yes? Goodbye, me.”

  “But you don’t like coffee!” said the girl, laughing.

  “I don’t?” he replied. He opened the brown oak door.

  “You don’t! You love Tee!” A yellow blur flung itself into his strong arms. “It’s so good to see you, Grandpapa!”

  The old man quickly scanned outside. Satisfied, he closed the door. He put his granddaughter down and offered to take her hooded cloak, but stopped when he noticed she looked sad.

  “What is it, my angel?” he asked.

  She stuck her fingers through a hole in her yellow cloak, looking disappointed. “It got another one yesterday.”

  “Well, some say that there isn’t a thing Nikolas Klaus cannot fix, and what he cannot fix, he can reinvent. I’m sure I can fix it for you.” Nikolas squeezed Tee’s cheeks. “Now, you’ll have to tell me how this happened, because I’m sure it is an exciting story, yes?”

  “It is! We built a—wait, did you make cookies?”

  Nikolas feigned surprise. “Oh, I forgot—I need to get my cookies out of the oven!”

  “Cookies!” yelled Tee. She bounded up the six stairs of the split-level home and straight into the kitchen. “Chocolate chip?”

  “I don’t remember. I think that they are …” and he lingered.

  “What are they?”

  “I think they are… a surprise!” He poked her nose lovingly.

  Even though he’d been home alone, Nikolas was dressed in fine pants and a tailor-made shirt and vest. Over top, he wore a cooking apron. He looked like a nobleman trying very hard to dress down.

  The house had exposed wooden beams and a polished wooden floor. It was unlike any house in the area—if not the entire kingdom. While packed bookshelves lined almost every wall, there were also mountains of books piled on the floor. There were few places in any kingdom, outside of royal libraries, that had as many books.

  Where there weren’t books there were worktables, used for drawing, set up at varying angles. Each table held ideas and inventions in differing stages of completion.

  Tee sat on her favorite chair. Though Nikolas had made many of the things in his house, he’d asked a friend to make the chair. The chair was made from a rare live tree and had grown as Tee had grown. Every time she visited, her grandfather would take it out its soil box on the deck, brush it off, and bring it in.

  “Grandpapa, tell me again why your wooden floors are shiny like glass?” she asked, looking with amazement at her reflection, as she’d done for years.

  Nikolas smiled and took the cookies out of the wood oven. “Now, I find it hard to believe that you came all the way over here to ask me about my floors. I’ve told you the story so many times. I am sure that you can explain it even better than I, now, yes?”

  Tee thought about how many times she’d been over to his house—the sleepovers, the silly games, and the times they’d stayed up all night inventing things. “I suppose …” Tee’s gaze slowly moved upward, and she took a moment to appreciate the incredible detail in the kitchen’s wood crown molding. “There are new parts!” remarked Tee, pointing.

  “Hmm? Oh?” said Nikolas, looking at the wood trim lining the top part of the kitchen walls. “What? No. Nothing new,” he said, baiting her. “It’s been like that for years.”

  “Yes, there is.” Tee stood up on her chair. “Right there. Three new symbols. You’re almost out of room. I think you’ll need a new board in a month or two.”

  Nikolas shook his head in amazement. She didn’t miss much. “You are right, on both counts,” he said. “But, before you ask—no.”

  “No, what?” asked Tee, this time baiting him.

  He looked her straight in the eyes. “No, I will not tell you what it is about.”

  Tee had asked for years, and each time he had politely refused. He’d said it in different ways, but it was always the same result. She felt it wasn’t so much that he was keeping a secret, as protecting her from its consequences. She knew that one day he would tell her—when they were both ready.

  She continued looking around the kitchen while waiting for the cookies to cool. Her eyes fell upon the picture hanging above the doorway.

  “I wish I could have known her,” Tee said, sadness in her voice.

  Nikolas turned around, holding the plate of cookies. “Who? Oh, yes, Grandmama. She would have loved you so much, my dear.” His eyes welled up a bit. “Life is cruel and unfair sometimes.”

  After setting the cookies on the table, he got on all fours, pushed aside a chair, and opened a trapdoor in the corner of the kitchen. “You want milk, yes, Tee?”

  “Yes please, Grandpapa.”

  Nikolas climbed down into his small, refrigerated cellar, returning a moment later with a jug of cold milk. “So, what have you been up to that could make such a hole in your cloak?” He topped up the oversized teacup he’d been sipping all morning and then sat down with a sigh.

  Tee remembered her wild ride. “Oh, yes. Well, yesterday Elly and I finished making the sail-cart, like you and I talked about.”

  Nikolas’ eyes lit up. “Really? A sail-cart? You and your friend Elly made one? I didn’t even get to show you any plans for making one yet. I just… I only told you about the idea!” He laughed with pride.

  “I know, but you explained it well enough, and Elly’s good with a hammer and saw.”

  Nikolas’ face wrinkled with fatherly concern. “Isn’t Elly a bit young to use a hammer?”

  Tee looked at him disapprovingly for having brought up age. “She’s twelve, like me, and only two inches shorter. That’s plenty old enough for tools! You were younger than us when you started inventing things, anyway.”

  “Hmm,” said Nikolas, recognizing he’d better not say anything more. His protective nature was sometimes at odds with the perhaps overly truthful stories he had shared of his own past.

  “Oh, that reminds me!” Tee sprang up, bolted to the front door, went into her backpack, and returned with the red box.

  “This is why I came. My dad
asked me to bring you something. It arrived yesterday, and he thought you’d need it today, even though you’re coming for dinner tonight. I didn’t peek inside.” Tee placed the red box on the table.

  Nikolas looked at the box and sighed heavily. He smiled at Tee. “This I can look at later,” he said, putting it in a kitchen drawer.

  Patting her lovingly on the head, he continued, “So, tell me. What happened with your cloak and the sail-cart?”

  Tee wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Her grandfather gave a disapproving look and tossed her a cloth napkin. Finished with it, she told him all about how she and Elly had spent several days making the sail-cart.

  Tee continued, “Then we were going to take it up to the treehouse …”

  “The secret one, high up the mountain? Isn’t that a bit dangerous?” Nikolas accidentally replied.

  Tee looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know about it?”

  A couple of seconds passed, and then her grandfather tapped his right temple and smiled. “You forget that some people consider me a genius. I knew it had to be a secret because you hadn’t told me about it before. You tell me everything.”

  Tee was unsure he was telling the whole truth, but decided to continue anyway. “We were right by Elly’s house which, if you remember, is up the mountain from my house, and down the road from here.”

  Nikolas smiled. He knew very well where Tee’s best friend lived. He’d known it since the time Tee had led him down the road, reaching way up to hold his hand, because she wanted to make sure he knew where Elly lived. She’d walked the whole way, which had taken quite some time with her little legs. When they’d arrived, she’d formally introduced him to her best friend, Elly. The memory always made him smile.

  “I got in the sail-cart to show Elly that everything worked and then—”

  Nikolas interrupted, “A big gust of wind! Where did you go?” He collected the dishes and started washing them in the sink.

  Tee smiled awkwardly. “It kind of pushed me off the road, down the side of the mountain—toward home.”

  All of a sudden, this seemingly innocent, fun story had taken a serious turn. “That’s when you used the brake, yes?” he asked, with concern.

  “Well,” said Tee sheepishly, “we kind of hadn’t built that part yet. That was most definitely going to be next.”

  After a big sigh, and reminding himself his granddaughter was clearly okay, he chuckled and shook his head. He thought to himself that the next time he’d speak to Tee about an invention, he should discuss the safety features first.

  “What happened then?” asked Nikolas.

  Tee took a sip of milk before responding. “So, then I kind of went down the mountainside, screaming. At first, I was wondering what I was going to do. I was scared of hitting a tree, but then I realized the steering worked really well! It was so much fun.”

  Nikolas enjoyed her stories. He imagined Tee, in her makeshift sail-cart, going down the mountainside, heading for home. Placing the last dish in the wooden rack to dry, he turned to face Tee and leaned on the counter. With a raised left eyebrow, he said, “But the cliff… you stopped before the cliff, yes?”

  Tee looked at her feet. She knew he wouldn’t like this part. “Dad saved me with that crossbow bolt with the rope attached. It went through my cloak and into a tree. I was kind of stuck there for a bit.”

  Nikolas’ eyes narrowed disapprovingly. “Where, exactly?”

  Tee’s head shrank into her body. “Um—in the tree.”

  “The same tree?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah.” Tee slowly looked up at her grandfather.

  Nikolas sat down. “Always the same tree. The one that is leaning off the cliff?” he said, gesturing with both hands.

  Tee smiled uncomfortably. “Kind of. It’s leaning more, now.”

  Nikolas rubbed his bald head for a moment, and then smoothed his salt-and-pepper beard. He could tell she understood this was serious and that she would’ve likely been killed if she hadn’t been lucky. Unfortunately, she always seemed to be lucky. “Hmm, I think we need to do something for that tree. We can’t have it go falling off the cliff, can we? What would save you next time?”

  Tee quietly sighed in relief. “You’re right. So, anyway, that’s how I made the hole in my cloak.” Tee felt lighter for having gotten the story off her chest.

  Nikolas messed with her hair lovingly and said, “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that yellow hooded cloak of yours. I—“

  Suddenly, there came an unexpected, heavy-handed knocking at the door.

  The three Cochon brothers walked out of the tavern, wiping the remains of lunch on their sleeves. They hadn’t talked much about the morning’s events. Each was embarrassed and angry.

  They stopped to watch the town’s people milling about. Some people were walking, some were pulling hand-carts, and some were on horses. It was like any other day. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and nothing interesting was happening—and this bothered Bakon.

  Watching a pair of town guards walk by on patrol, Bakon pondered aloud, “Why would a messenger show up here? Mineau would make sense. It’s a bigger town. It’s easier to get to, being at the bottom of the mountain. Why come here—to Minette? We’re a fraction of Mineau’s size.”

  “Maybe he got lost?” suggested Squeals in his high-pitched, scratchy, nervous voice.

  Bakon shook his head. “A man like that doesn’t get lost. I don’t think he’s just a messenger, either.”

  Squeals asked, “Should we tell Archambault?”

  Bakon shook his head again. “Not yet. We don’t know anything. It’s just that it doesn’t make sense.” He paused to watch some people load a cart before continuing. “What’s so important about our town? The Magistrate isn’t even back yet from wherever he went. So that means the messenger can’t be expecting to see him, and that messenger is not going to deliver a message to anyone but its intended recipient.”

  Bore bent down and scratched the edge of his right big toe, which poked out from a loose seam in his patchwork boots. “Maybe the man’s not here for the town,” he said.

  Bakon and Squeals turned to look at their mountain of a younger brother.

  “Go on, Bore,” prompted Bakon. “What are you thinking?”

  Over the years, Bore had proven that while most of what he said was simple and obvious, on occasion he saw something that everyone else missed.

  He pointed to the people walking around. “No one is excited. I liked seeing him. He was fancy,” said Bore, smiling. “We don’t see fancy a lot.”

  Bakon started to laugh and slapped Bore’s arm affectionately. “You’re right, Bore! You are right.” He smiled at the dozens of people walking around and acting like it was just an ordinary day. “People should be gossiping about him and gathering in groups. They wouldn’t be like… this,” he said, gesturing. “This messenger is dressed fancier than anyone in town except for maybe the Magistrate himself. The people wouldn’t be able to help themselves.”

  Squeals’ eyes squinted with jealousy. It was rare that Bakon ever paid him any compliments. “Well—” said Squeals, trying to think of something to earn praise, “maybe he went to see someone else!”

  Bakon, disappointed, glared at Squeals. “Well of course he went to see someone else! If he’s not here for the town, then he’s here to deliver a message to someone. The question is who would be deserving of an almost-royal messenger?” Bakon started to march toward the center of town.

  “Wait—can we go home and get our flintlocks, first?” asked Squeals, almost eating his words with nervousness. “I hate magic. If it comes again, I want to shoot it.”

  Bakon shook his head angrily. “There’s no such thing as magic, you dimwit. How many times do I have to say it?” His brother cowered, and Bakon calmed down. “But,” he continued, “I do think you finally had a good idea.”

  Squeals looked at the ground, and smiled.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Huff and Puff
r />   “Please open the door, Monsieur Klaus. This is official business. I request that you let me in,” said the messenger. He knocked vigorously on the front door.

  Hand to lips, Nikolas signaled his granddaughter to be quiet. When he started to move toward the kitchen’s back door, Tee tugged on his sleeve.

  “It’s okay, Grandpapa,” she whispered. “It’s a man I helped earlier. He’s an official messenger. I helped him get away from the Cochon brothers and find his horse.”

  Nikolas looked at Tee with surprise and concern. “I don’t think you understand, my dear.”

  “No, Grandpapa, you don’t understand. His name is Andre LeLoup, and he’s on official business. He’s nice.”

  Nikolas’ eyes narrowed. “LeLoup?” he asked uncomfortably.

  Tee nodded.

  The forceful knocking came again. “I know you are inside and I require you to open the door. Now, please, let me in!” said LeLoup.

  Nikolas looked at his granddaughter’s pleading eyes. She didn’t understand. She’d never seen him act any way except graciously toward strangers.

  He knew that LeLoup’s use of official business was his coded way of telling Nikolas that if LeLoup got what he wanted, he’d leave without anyone being harmed.

  Nikolas sighed deeply, and whispered, “I need you to trust me, my dear. This is not what you think.” He took her by the hand and started heading for the back door of the kitchen.

  Tee slipped from his grip and ran to the front entrance. “I need my yellow cloak and backpack!” she whispered loudly.

  “You have left me no choice, Monsieur Klaus!” said LeLoup angrily.

  As Tee grabbed her backpack and pulled her cloak on, the door blew open with an explosive puff of smoke, knocking her against the wall and off her feet. LeLoup peered in and saw the unmoving yellow-cloaked heap on the floor.

  Nikolas rushed toward LeLoup, instinctively grabbing a long plain-looking metal rod out from a hidden nook in the kitchen doorframe.