Bisclavret

by K. L. Noone

  Andreas folded the shirt back into the trunk, set a hand on my back, and became steady certainty: a king protecting his man. I leaned into his warmth, grateful. He said, “Would you like to go somewhere more private?” and his voice shook, almost imperceptibly, in a way it so rarely does.

  I nodded. We did.

  We found our bedchamber. Our private book-lined space. The bed we’d shared, nestled together, fur and skin and contentment. He dropped the trunk, shut the door—shooing trailing eyes away—and paused.

  Andreas is rarely unsure—more so than he admits to others, but still rarely so—but now he was. Uncertain, and waiting: not an expert in magic, nor in werewolves, and aware that a human Lord Bisclavret might choose a new life. A life elsewhere, beyond this castle. A new country, free to roam and run and flee any memory of a torturous experience. Anything I might want, starting anew.

  He said, “Do you want help? Should I—?” and took out clothing and set it gently on the bed, and I jumped up beside the folds of it.

  He stepped back, not scared but offering space. “Do you need privacy? Should I not watch? But if I can help you, I—I want…” He held out a hand but did not quite touch me.

  I put out a hairy clawed wolf’s paw, and touched fragile human silk.

  The paw, where it met the world of men, grew paler, elongating, shedding fur like old scabs from a wound. Claws shrunk and flattened, becoming thin ovals, useless for fighting or climbing. My skin clamored with cold, abandoned by its protective coat. The change swept through my body like ice-needles: leaving me breathless and disoriented by the riotous blaze of color, the sense of indefinable loss and gain and alteration. I felt skinned and flayed, not just body but soul, as though all the emotions of the past years had spent themselves at once. My fingers, where they touched the silk of my shirt, pressed into the fabric, crushing it.

  My fingers. My hands.

  I lifted them, wonderingly, for examination: these strange new appendages, so eerily familiar. The same long fingers, the old calluses of sword-practice and wood-chopping, days spent helping my tenants fell logs or dam a stream. The small crescent-shaped scar on one finger from a childhood mishap with my mother’s porcelain vase. My memories. My self.

  I moved to dress myself, bit by bit.

  It felt strangely confining: to wrap myself in linen and silk and leather, to fasten intricate little buttons and tie twisted cords. And yet it was reassuring, as it always had been: I was a man again. Like any ritual, it soothed me.

  I heard a sound, small as an unnoticed wound. I turned; Andreas had sat down atop the closed trunk, not as if he’d meant to but as if he couldn’t stand, watching me discover myself and my future and the open roads of possibilities now that I could speak and stand and rejoin the world.

  He’d lost the crown. Of course he had. He’d also bitten his lower lip hard enough for toothmarks, holding back a word or a gesture or anything that might interfere with the magic, or with my choices.

  He knew how much that meant. Having choices again.

  He said nothing, though his eyes were wide and beautiful and full of reverence as he watched me.

  “Well,” I said, a bit unsteadily, “this is me. Not what you might have expected—”

  And then I put out a hand to touch him, because I couldn’t not. Fingertips against his cheek, over a scratch of golden stubble. Against the bitten-pink plushness of his lips. “Does that hurt?”

  “No,” he said against my finger. The word, his breath, his huge eyes—growing brighter, green and brown and gold as forests—felt like a kiss. “No, I—I like you like this. I don’t know what I expected. But you’re more.”

  “More?” I breathed in, shut eyes, opened them. Human sight. Color drenching the world. The indigo and sapphire and crimson of bed-hangings. The chill of the room and an unlit fire in the night. My chest, expanding and dusted with hair—human hair, dark brown and lightly greying.

  “More,” he said. “You’re magical. And I’m not—I’m me. I’m human. What will you do? What do you want? Anything I can give you.”

  I took both his hands. They were miracles, in mine.

  He bit that lip again. “You can have anything. Go anywhere. I’ll see about restoring your lands if you’d like, or grant you new holdings if you’d prefer, or—I’d understand if you wanted to leave, I could find you passage to the Western Islands or anyplace you’d rather—”

  “You’re my King.” I tugged at his hands; he got up. He was taller than my human shape—he always will be—but more lean and slender, sunkissed and dazzling. He felt good up against me, close together.

  He breathed, “Tell me what you want from me. As—as your King. If that’s what I am.” If that’s all I am, said his voice: wistful as broken glass.

  “I don’t want to go to the Western Islands,” I told him. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  “Then—I’ll send messages about your estates, Marrock Wood—”

  “Cousin Matilda’s been a good Lady of the Wood. The tenants have grown used to her by now.” I put arms around him; he leaned against me as if the gesture was involuntary, natural, a need. “I think I’d prefer a different place.”

  “A different—”

  “With books. With…someone who likes romances. And scholarship about the ancient Stoics. And a library that keeps expanding. You need a librarian.”

  “Do I? I mean…yes. I do.” His smile lit sparks under my skin: like freedom, like running ahead, like leaping into sunbeams. “I would like that. You could stay here. In the palace. With—with me.”

  “With you.” I touched his hair. It felt the way I’d imagined those sunbeams might: weightless and gilded. “Here.”

  “And we’ll build a library and repair the university and sit through terrible dry administrative meetings together.”

  “I’m still me,” I whispered. I wanted this luminous future; I wanted it so badly I could taste it. But he had to know. He had to know what a future with me meant. “Three nights each month—”

  “Three nights each month you’ll need to run under moonlight. You’ll wear fur and I’ll come out and run with you. You won’t hurt me; you’ve never hurt anyone.” He added, wry and sweet and laced with laughter, “You’ve got an enchantment to cope with; I’ve got the members of the Inner Council. Yours might be simpler.”

  “I’ll be there with you,” I said. “I’ll growl at the most patronizing Council members for you. I’ll love every minute. I—I love you, you know.”

  “I thought,” he said, “I hoped—I wanted—I love you. I have since—since you trusted me. In the forest. Not because I was your ruler, or because you wanted something from me, but—you looked at me and saw someone worth trusting. And you like books and you notice when I’ve lost the crown someplace and you understand that I—that I’m me, not my father, and I…I don’t want to lose you. I love you.”

  “I’ll find your crown. Organize your books. And I’ll stay.” I leaned in and up: a heartbeat from a kiss. “If you want me, I’m yours. I love you.”

  “My wolf,” he murmured, “my protector—my librarian—” We laughed, though it was the sort of laugh that became a prelude to a kiss, the instant before, the swoop of anticipation.

  A knock bounced off the bedchamber door. A man-at-arms. Leith, in fact: who’d been in the forest that first day. “Andreas? Majesty? Say something!”

  A few more voices rustled. The castle, the kingdom, needed to know.

  “I’m perfectly fine!” Andreas yelled back. “And so is Lord Bisclavret! Give us a moment!”

  This silence, unlike the earlier version in the hall, got pink and embarrassed with some comprehension: the King, and a lord he’d technically been sharing a bed with, alone in a bedchamber.

  “They care about you,” I observed. “Your people.”

  “I care about them.” He tipped that head, grinning and shameless and wholly happy now: here in my arms. “I care about you.”

  I kissed him, then. He tas
ted like blackberry wine from the earlier festivities, and his lips were slightly cold, and he kissed back eagerly, without much practice but with sheer delight.

  It was a first kiss. I had nearly forgotten the way it felt: a lover’s lips under mine, the heat and texture and slipping and tumbling together, tongues and tastes and breath and skin. I might have kissed other men and women, a lifetime ago; I’d never kissed him.

  It was a first. It was glorious.

  It still is. Every time.

  My body, newly awakened, tingled. Stiffened. Throbbed. Andreas drew back, blinked, lifted eyebrows. “You like this.”

  “I like you.” I touched lips to his, fleetingly. “Nothing you don’t want. I swear it.”

  “Oh, I want you. I trust you.” He grinned. “You may have to show me what you like. What to do. Perhaps not all at once. Or quite a lot at once. I’ve really only wanted this once before, you know, and he went off to explore the trade routes across the Salt Sea and got married and sent a beautiful silk robe as a coronation present, which has nothing at all to do with anything, except that I’m trying to explain.”

  “I know.” I kissed his forehead this time. “You told me.” He had.

  “I did, didn’t I? And you listened. You know, I rather like thinking about my reputation, after this.”

  “The king with a werewolf in his bed.”

  “Awe-inspiring.”

  “Magical.”

  Leith thumped the door again. “If you don’t open up we’re coming in to save you!”

  “Well,” Andreas said, “I expect we should save our bedroom door.”

  “We should,” I agreed. “Shall we?”

  “My Lord,” he said, teasing and formal, hand on my arm; “My king,” I answered, and opened the door.

  You know the story from here, of course.

  The fanfare. The cheering. The royal marriage. My own new title. The tales told far and wide. And it’s true. It’s all true: like the sunshine on my arm as I write, like the scratch of pen on parchment.

  I still sometimes dream the wolf’s dreams—the fear, the betrayal, the need to run and escape, the certainty that even when I wake it won’t be real. But it is.

  He is. And the fairy-story happy endings are sometimes not a lie.

  It’s possible that’s why Andreas wanted me to write this one. So that I’d tell it to myself, and know it, down in my bones.

  For an adorable youthful ruler he’s sneakily clever. I love him wholeheartedly and completely, even when he leaves half-drunk cups of tea next to the bed because he’s reading and forgets to finish them.

  The fairy-story happy endings can be real. That’s important.

  Elaine and Edgar did end up in exile, half voluntary, half a fairly forceful suggestion from the throne. I’ve heard they are happy, more or less; I’ve also heard she grew ill, a disease that ravaged her face, and that of her children. But she does have children, a family, the lands Andreas allowed them to keep in trust for an inheritance. She writes to me, on occasion; I answer, on occasion. I’d let Andreas read them if he asked; he doesn’t ask, though I wouldn’t mind. He says he’s happy knowing I’m happy.

  I am.

  I wake beside him as myself—werewolf, man, husband, Royal Consort—every morning. I sleep beside him every night, in our bed, on royal progresses, in a hunting lodge in the greenwood. I trust him with every piece of me: my clothing, my enchantment, my body, my heart.

  He’s been right about his reputation and wedding—and bedding—a werewolf. Other rulers regard him with impressed awe. One or two of the bravest might dare to ask. He only smiles. This makes the reputation grow.

  He says my name sometimes for no real reason, because he knows I like to hear it: my name, myself, in a voice full of love.

  I am Lord Bisclavret, I am the King’s werewolf, and I am home.

  And I am planning to go and find my King, who ought to be nearly done meeting with the royal engineers about the plans for improving our roadways and highways, and kiss him very thoroughly in his office. Every inch of him. Very thoroughly.

  He likes that. So do I.

  THE END

  ABOUT K.L. NOONE

  K.L. Noone loves fantasy, romance, cats, far too sweet coffee, and happy endings! She is also the author of Port in a Storm and its upcoming sequel, available from Less Than Three Press, and numerous short romances with Ellora’s Cave and Circlet Press. Her fantasy fiction has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies.

  With her Professor Hat on, she teaches college students about Shakespeare and superhero comics, and has published academic articles and essays on Neil Gaiman’s adaptations of Beowulf, Welsh mythology in modern fantasy, and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

  For more information, visit twitter.com/KristinNoone.

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