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

by Adam Dreece

“What happened, Papa?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In Sheep's Clothing

  A short, balding man in his fifties picked up his worn medical bag from the guard’s inspection table. Nervous sweat pooled at the base of his hairline.

  “Everything looks fine, doctor. You may enter,” said the young guard, unlocking the thick wood and steel door leading to the jail cells. “This guy gets too much attention, if you ask me. After all these weeks, he’s still getting people dropping by. Most guys only get one visitor, if any, before they’re shipped off… or, you know, executed,” said the guard with a slicing gesture.

  The doctor forced a smile, making his round face look awkward. “Special circumstances,” he replied as he hesitantly entered the small hallway.

  “We moved everyone else to the jail across the street. You never know with a guy like this one. He’s smart,” said the guard as the doctor disappeared and the door closed behind him.

  At the end of the hallway were three sparsely furnished jail cells. LeLoup was in the middle one, lying on its straw mattress and whistling.

  Once the bolt of the heavy door was locked back into place, LeLoup turned to see who they had let into his cage—what fresh meat had they thrown him? It had been a couple of days since he’d had a visitor who wasn’t a guard.

  “Hello doc—oh, it’s you. The other doctor,” said LeLoup, pretending to be disappointed.

  The doctor looked around, uneasy.

  LeLoup continued, “If you’re wondering if there is an echo in here, there is—from the stone walls. There’s nothing to drink up the sound. It’s why I like to whistle here—the echo. It does give the place an eerie feel, though. Of course, they wouldn’t want it to feel like home, now would they? It would spoil the experience.”

  He sat up and stretched. “But you know all this already, don’t you? It’s not your first visit.”

  The doctor tried to hide behind his bag as he made his way to LeLoup’s iron-barred cell door.

  “How… how do you feel, Monsieur LeLoup?” asked the doctor, adjusting his glasses.

  In the weeks that had passed since LeLoup had been moved to the jail from the hospital, he had neither shaved nor brushed his hair. He looked like a wild man.

  LeLoup’s main doctor had stopped visiting a couple of days ago, saying everything was fine. When he’d last left the jail, he’d been complaining about how the Magistrate wanted LeLoup kept in such good health—a waste of the doctor’s precious time given the prisoner was going to be executed anyway.

  LeLoup had meant to ask him about this other doctor, but he had had so much fun terrorizing the poor man that he’d forgotten to do so.

  With false graciousness, LeLoup said, “Doctor, I do so appreciate your visit. Without you, I’d have just these kind gentlemen to talk to,” he said, gesturing to the empty cells. “I must say—they aren’t as amusing as they once were.”

  The doctor frowned in confusion, looking to the other cells. “There’s… no one there,” he said quietly.

  LeLoup stood up and exaggerated his own glance at each of the other cells. “Well, I think they have grown a bit thin—the food here is terrible. Even by local standards. Especially the cheese. Substandard.”

  Stretching once more, he stood up and found himself feeling a bit disoriented. Andre was vaguely aware that something inside himself had snapped that day outside of Klaus’ house. He wasn’t the man he’d once been. He felt freer and stronger—yet unbalanced, like a heavy club that could smash better but was harder to wield. Thoughts of revenge and restoring his reputation were increasingly dominating his thoughts; meanwhile, his long-held professional code of ethics was melting away.

  LeLoup looked at the doctor. “I don’t have many friends here,” he said sadly. “In some ways, I’ve even abandoned myself. How about we declare that we are friends? What do you say? You could call me Andre and I will call you Doctor.”

  LeLoup tried to give the doctor his most charming smile, but he was distracted. When he’d said his own first name aloud, it had felt foreign, as if he had said someone else’s name. He was only LeLoup now.

  “Ah… okay,” replied the doctor submissively, “but my name is—”

  “You’re name is Doctor! Don’t demean yourself with a commoner’s name, like mine. You are a special man—a smart man. You have devoted your life to an important profession. Allow me the honor of calling you Doctor?” LeLoup gestured dramatically, moving toward the bars. His intense, green eyes drilled into the doctor’s own.

  The doctor and LeLoup stood only inches apart, the iron bars separating them. LeLoup then leaned in further. His face pushed up against the bars.

  “You are a doctor, right?” he asked, grinning disturbingly.

  The doctor gulped hard and nodded. Sweat was running down his face and dripping off his chin.

  If LeLoup had wanted, he could’ve reached through the bars and grabbed the frightened man, but he didn’t.

  He gave the doctor a sheepish look, and pulled himself back. “I’ve been too forward, haven’t I? How rude of me. My mother always told me that all things come in good time. You can’t rush a good thing like friendship. What do you think?”

  The doctor lost his grip on his bag and it dropped to the floor with an echoing thump. He quickly wiped his sweaty palms on his pants.

  “There’s that echo,” said LeLoup. He watched the doctor’s every muscle as he bent to pick up his bag.

  “So, how is my friend?” asked LeLoup, grinning. “That is why you are here, no? My friend, the horseman, visited you and asked you to pay me one more visit, didn’t he? I can tell.”

  The doctor swallowed hard. He looked around in case somehow he’d missed seeing someone else in the room. “Y-y-yes,” he stammered.

  “Then we are friends. We should celebrate our friendship with a good meal. We could have some wine, some cheese, and whatever excuse they have for meat around here. What do you think?”

  “Um, yes?” said the doctor, again confused.

  In a disappointed voice LeLoup said, “But we have a problem. We cannot do this—not now. Do you know why?”

  After a couple of awkward seconds, the doctor replied, unsure, “Because… you’re in jail?” He had been stepping back and now found himself pressed up against the back wall.

  “Oh—I thought it was because of my new look. Not fitting for a man of class, I suppose,” said LeLoup, touching his face as he pretended to look in a mirror. He turned back to the doctor, grinned, and tapped his temple. “But you are right. A smart man! That’s why you are the doctor and I am the prisoner. But now, as a friend, you will help me in a smart way, no?”

  The doctor stared, expressionless, at LeLoup.

  LeLoup dropped his smile. He opened his green eyes wide, almost as if they could swallow up the doctor. “Right, doctor?”

  The doctor nodded mindlessly.

  LeLoup relaxed his gaze. “Tell my horseman that I am being sent to the Magistrate tomorrow morning to be judged. He will know what to do.” LeLoup stepped back, satisfied.

  The doctor stood motionless, unable to decide what to do next.

  “Leave!” commanded LeLoup. The doctor ran to the big door and banged on it repeatedly until the guard opened it.

  “How did it go?” asked the guard.

  The doctor slowly looked up from the floor to stare at the guard. His hollow eyes silenced the guard. The doctor then mechanically walked off to his scheduled meeting with Captain Archambault.

  Tee was at home playing in the front yard when she spotted her grandfather coming down the road to the house. Planks of wood were sticking out of his cart, and she knew from experience it was likely filled with other materials as well. Nikolas regularly brought supplies over to build things with her and her father. The three of them loved it, and Jennifer loved watching them.

  The closer Nikolas got, the more curious Tee became; it seemed he was pushing the cart—the kind that was supposed to be pulled by a horse. Something didn
’t make sense.

  Before she knew it, she’d run up to him. “Grandpapa, what are you doing? You shouldn’t be pushing a cart like that.” She took a closer look. “Wait—how are you doing this? You aren’t red in the face or sweating or anything.”

  He gently let go of the handles and the cart quickly stopped.

  “Whoa,” said Tee, amazed.

  Nikolas smiled. “I was inspired, my Tee. The whole thing with LeLoup made me realize I cannot hide from who I am. Not from my involvement with the Tub, and not from my most important ideas. I must get them out into the world. If not, others will steal them and twist them to evil ends.”

  Tee nodded as she walked around the cart and then looked underneath. She marveled at the glowing blue lines that connected the strange, large box under the cart to the various wooden gears.

  “Why does it glow blue?” asked Tee.

  “Magic,” said Nikolas with a twinkle in his eye.

  “What?” said Tee, frowning at him. “You always said there’s no such thing as magic.”

  Nikolas chuckled. “There isn’t.”

  “What is it then?” asked Tee, excited.

  “Hmm. Not just yet. Have a look first,” said Nikolas, encouraging her curious nature.

  Examining the handles, Tee asked, “How do these just stay in the air without falling or rising up? They’re just floating there.” She wasn’t quite sure if she should touch them.

  “Ah!” said Nikolas. “It’s actually very simple. First, they are weighted and balanced independently from the cargo area of the cart. This cart is really two separate devices—connected for the purpose of movement.”

  Tee peered into the cart but couldn’t see what he meant.

  Nikolas continued, pointing, “Under this cargo area’s floor is a hidden container filled with a heavy liquid. It keeps the cargo area perfectly level under normal conditions.”

  He could see Tee trying to figure this out in her head. “Get in. I’ll show you!” he said, and offered to lift her up.

  Tee hesitated before agreeing to go in the cargo area, among the tools and materials.

  “Now, watch,” said Nikolas as he thrust the handles into the air. He saw Tee’s instinctive look of panic as she anticipated being tossed from the cart. Instead, nothing happened to her. She watched him arc the handles up and down, all the while the cargo area didn’t move.

  “Wow,” said Tee as she climbed down. “Is the heavy liquid keeping it level because of—”

  Nikolas made a fake cough and gave Tee his famous raised eyebrow. “My granddaughter, you have taught me that I should explain the dangers and the safety parts first—before explaining how the rest works, yes?” said Nikolas.

  Tee smiled guiltily.

  “So, do you think this is worthy of one of your La-La’s?” asked Nikolas, continuing the walk to the house and pushing the cart with ease.

  “Hmm, maybe,” said Tee cheekily.

  Nikolas took a moment to scratch his itchy, overgrown beard. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaved, or washed properly. Isabella used to always make sure that no matter how much he was focused on inventing something, that he looked respectable, ate properly, and met life’s other obligations. He missed her.

  Tee took the handles from him and gave his cart a small shove. “This cart feels as light as my backpack.”

  Nikolas hid a yawn. “Yes. Do you realize that you are pushing fifty pounds of cargo plus the weight of the cart up an inclined plane! This one is much better than the one I first built.”

  “How long ago was that?” asked Tee.

  “Years ago. I’ve been trying to figure out this puzzle of propulsion for a long, long time. I have finally solved it,” replied Nikolas.

  “Wow,” said Tee again, pushing the cart a couple of yards.

  When Nikolas yawned again, it was too big to hide from Tee.

  She raised an eyebrow of disapproval. “Have you had any sleep, Grandpapa?”

  Nikolas laughed. “You sound like your mother. You don’t need to worry; I’m fine for us to make some sail-carts today.”

  Tee smiled approvingly. “One more thing,” she said.

  Nikolas squinted in mock suspicion. “Yes?”

  “I won’t say anything to mom about you not sleeping, if you let me push the cart the rest of the way home.”

  Nikolas folded his arms and pretended to dwell on the proposal for a bit. “That is acceptable.”

  When they arrived at the house, Tee’s mother came out, wiping her hands on a towel. “What’s this you’ve built, Papa?”

  “I built it,” he replied triumphantly.

  “Built what?” asked Jennifer carefully, not wanting to assume she knew what he was talking about.

  “He built a cart that doesn’t need a horse!” yelled Tee. “I pushed it all the way from the dead tree to here… Me!”

  Jennifer’s jaw dropped. “Papa?”

  Nikolas thought back to the first time he’d brought the idea up, a long time ago. He’d been enjoying a cup of tea and afternoon snacks with his wife, Isabella, and Jennifer, who was still a teenager. He had expected them to laugh, or be skeptical, but they hadn’t. They’d taken the opportunity to tell him how much they believed in him, and if anyone was going to change the world, they knew it would be him.

  “It took me longer than I originally thought, but yes, I got it working properly,” said Nikolas. “It still needs a lot of improvement. I can make it last longer, be faster. I have many ideas I want to try.”

  Jennifer slowly moved around the cart and examined the contraption.

  “Papa, these gears and the rest of the mechanism… It has evolved a lot,” she said proudly. “The blue light! You always thought the energy would glow blue, but you couldn’t ever get it to work.”

  Nikolas looked at his daughter, smiling. “So what ingredient was missing from my formula? Guess!” he asked her with a voice that reminded her of when she was a young girl. “You now know that it glows blue and that it works. My process hasn’t changed from the one we discussed years ago. So what was missing?”

  Jennifer crouched down and ran her hand along the glowing blue lines. “There’s silver in this, isn’t there?”

  Nikolas nodded approvingly. “Go on. What was I missing in the battery solution?”

  Closing her eyes, she built the machine in her head, as her father had trained her to do. She finally opened her eyes and looked at him with a silly grin. “Sugar,” she said decisively.

  “Such a smart girl,” he said, beaming, a proud tear in his eye.

  Unlike her siblings, Jennifer had been at his side while he worked on many of his inventions. Despite that, she never developed an interest in inventing machines herself. Her aptitude lay in other places—farming in particular. She managed to get more than twice the yield from her patch of land than anyone else in town.

  “Sugar? Sugar does this?” asked Tee, confused.

  Her mother and grandfather both laughed.

  Jennifer answered, “No, Tee. What Papa has in there is a mix of different things. It reacts together and makes energy. What it had been missing to work properly was sugar. But I doubt it’s anything like the sugar we use in the kitchen.”

  She stood up and looked her dad over. His face held triumph, and exhaustion. “You haven’t slept in days, have you?” she asked, mothering him.

  Tee giggled.

  Nikolas tried to wave them off. “I have had some sleep. The body cannot function without any sleep, and the mind even less so. Now, is my body content with the amount of sleep I have given it? No. But I will sleep well tonight.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Papa, you know what I mean.”

  Nikolas held her hands and looked into her eyes. “I had to get this done. Simon St. Malo thought I was working on the steam engine. That means he needs an energy source—a big one—to drive something. He probably means to transport huge numbers of cannons and soldiers.

  “I did sleep at my workbench as I wor
ked to solve the last piece of the puzzle. I had to make this. Something big is coming; I can feel it. I hope my invention will help our friends, not our enemies.”

  Jennifer listened thoughtfully. “Papa, let’s talk about that another time. Right now, I’m really proud of you. Mama would have been proud too.” She sniffed, resisting the sadness at the thought of her mother. With that, she gave her father a big hug.

  After a minute, Tee realized something. “Hey,” she said as the hug finished, “your library downstairs. You’ve already built something like this, haven’t you? That’s why it’s always full of light.”

  A smile crossed Nikolas’ face. “Not exactly, my darling granddaughter. But yes, that technology is a predecessor to this one. That room, I built when Grandmama was still alive. She helped me with it. It was my greatest invention at the time, and has always been a closely guarded secret. I only ever built one other, and like my house, it has an underground stream that makes it possible.”

  Jennifer took the towel from her shoulder, signaling she was ready to get back to work. “I’m sure you brought all this material so you two can keep Will out of trouble this afternoon?”

  Nikolas smiled.

  As Tee and Nikolas walked the cart to the backyard, Tee asked, “So how did you solve it, after all these years?”

  Nikolas chuckled. “Always so many questions! I was sitting in my kitchen, having a cup of tea, reading my notes, and thinking—”

  “Notes? The wood trim! So they are about this!” interrupted Tee, jumping up and down in triumph at having figured out the molding’s purpose.

  Nikolas messed her hair affectionately. “I learned that trick from my father, to hide things in plain sight. Like him, I like them to be beautiful, like the ideas they are hiding. Every time I had an idea I wanted to remember about this, I added it to the molding. When it was full, I took it down and made a new one that summarized the best ideas. I’ve done this many times over the years.

  “When I put down my teacup, about to start taking down the molding, I knocked over the sugar jar. As the sunlight bounced off those wonderful crystals, the idea hit me!”