Along Came a Wolf (The Yellow Hoods, #1): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale (2 page)

William turned as if he saw something in the forest. “I just—I have a bad feeling. Hopefully this will keep her out of trouble.”

Jennifer’s eyes took on a steely glint. She straightened up, her posture revealing a hint of the hidden warrior within. “Do you know what’s in that red box?”

“No,” he replied, “but I have a good idea.”

CHAPTER TWO

Of Wolves & Pigs

Tee placed the little red box in her backpack, slipped the backpack over her shoulders, and then pulled her cloak over top. With her parcel secured, she proceeded to sing and dance down the road, as she usually did.

She loved the smell of the forest, and the look of the red and yellow leaves everywhere. It was like a duel of colors, each fighting for supremacy.

While autumn had just begun, the trees seemed a bit impatient to embrace winter. Every now and then, the morning seemed to whisper that winter wasn’t far away. Tee wondered what the rush was.

“Hello. Well, what do we have here?” boomed a menacing, local-accented voice. Instinctively, Tee sprang into the bushes. After a quick look around, she realized the voice came from down the road.

The voice belonged to a tall, rough-looking, unshaven man. He was about fifty yards down the trail with two bigger, rougher-looking men, one on each side. The trio had stopped a finely dressed man atop a brown and white horse.

Tee moved through the bushes with practiced ease, until she could clearly see the three men. “The Cochon brothers,” she muttered to herself. She’d heard of the troublemakers and had been warned many times to avoid them. There were rumors they’d recently run some guys out of town.

The stranger’s horse nervously moved back and forth, trying to get away from the brothers who flanked her. The rider was doing his best to keep her calm.

“Let me pass,” said the rider in crisp, clear words. 

Tee immediately noticed his slight accent, and the way he held himself. By the way he was looking down at the ruffians, and how his words were clear and sharply pronounced, she guessed he was used to being around important people—perhaps even royalty. Her grandfather had taught her how to listen for such clues. 

She wondered if the rider was from one of the two capital cities of their small kingdom, or maybe even from one of the neighboring kingdoms to the east or south.

“I have an urgent message to deliver. Remove yourselves!” he commanded, placing his hand atop the gold and silver hilt of his sword. A flintlock pistol was visible, tucked into his black belt.

Tee shook her head. “Shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered to herself. “Now they’re going to want what you’ve got.”

The two younger brothers looked to the eldest, who stood in front of the horse. “I’ll tell you what,
messenger boy
,” said the eldest Cochon. “For a small sum of money, I’ll deliver the message for you. Now what is it?”

The rider closely examined the three brothers. “My name is Andre LeLoup. I am on official business. Out of my way!” he said indignantly. He seemed both relieved and disappointed that they didn’t recognize his name.

“That’s a funny name for a horse—
official business
!” said the middle brother, known as Squeals. The three brothers laughed.

“Right you are,” said the eldest. “Right you are. Now, I’m not an unreasonable man. Am I, Bore?”

The youngest brother, Bore, was by far the largest. A wall of a man, he stood six feet, five inches tall. Like his brothers, his clothes were homemade, and badly. Worse yet, his boots were a patchwork, made by cutting up pairs of smaller boots and stitching them together.

He shook his head in an exaggerated fashion and replied in a deep, dim-witted voice, “No, Bakon, nope.”

Bore’s first name was actually Boris, but he had never been able to pronounce it properly. Everyone knew him as Bore. Unfortunately, it emphasized his pig-like looks. “My brother, he’s a nice man,” he added, giggling like a mischievous little boy.

Meanwhile, in the bushes, Tee rifled through her backpack.

Bakon studied the messenger up and down. “So, how about you come down for a little chat then, eh?” he asked.

The messenger glared at the ruffians and started to reach for his pistol. “Now, I demand—”

Bakon interrupted, “Oh, I’ve had enough of him. Bring him down, boys!” 

On command, the two Cochon brothers reached up and pulled the man down with ease, forcing him to his knees and holding him in place. 

Squeals slapped the horse’s side, yelling, “Get out of here!”

Bakon looked at Squeals in disbelief as the horse ran away. “What did you do that for? We could have sold it! Or maybe the message was on it!”

Squeals’ head slumped in submission. “Oh—sorry, Bakon. Wasn’t thinking.”

Bore also shook his head. “No thinking, Squeals. No thinking,” he said, tapping the side of his head. Squeals gave Bore a look that put him in his place.

Bakon quickly calmed himself down. “She won’t go far. Just…
don’t
do that next time.” He then turned to the messenger. “So, Monsieur …” he started, trying to remember the messenger’s name.

The messenger glared up from his forced kneeling position, his arms pinned by the two huge brothers. “My name is LeLoup. This is an insult! I will have you—”

Bakon waved at the man to stop talking. “What is it you want out of this? Do you want to hand over the message? Or maybe you’d like to hand over your gold
and
the message? I couldn’t blame you if you wanted to do that, now, could I?”

The two brothers nodded in agreement.

“I’d like for you to drop dead!” spat LeLoup. 

Suddenly, Bakon fell over—flat on his face.

Bore and Squeals looked at each other in a panic and screamed, “Aaah! Magic!” They ran off into the forest.

Tee reloaded her slingshot and jumped out of the bushes. “La-la!” she yelled triumphantly. “Run away, little piggies!” She quickly scanned the forest for more trouble. 

Once she confirmed no one else was lurking, she lowered her slingshot and approached the messenger. He was angrily talking to himself.

Tee pointed to the face-down elder Cochon brother and said, “He’ll be up in a minute. The stones I use only stun for a couple of minutes at most.”

The messenger finished brushing himself off. He scrutinized Tee, in her yellow hooded cloak, white blouse, and light brown pants. He wrinkled his nose at how boyishly she dressed.

“So, you are the one who knocked out the ruffian?” he asked.

“Tee, Yellow Hood of the forest, at your service,” she replied, bowing. Andre shook his head slightly at her lack of a curtsey.

“I am Andre LeLoup. A pleasure to meet you,” he said stiffly. “Thank you for your assistance. I thought I’d seen a flash of yellow in the distance. I didn’t realize it was a person. Never mind—you are my little savior, are you not?” He offered an appreciative smile. “But, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to keep this between us. It won’t help my reputation for people to learn that I was helped by a little girl in a yellow hood.”

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.