“For a mortal,” he growled, heaving in great, raspy breaths, “you are remarkably strong. Almost as strong as…” He paused, narrowing his eyes.
“Are you sure you received what you came for, little prince? It would be annoying if we came all this way for nothing.” Before I could answer, he sniffed the air, nose twitching. “No, your scent is different. You are different. You do not smell like you did before, but neither do you smell 351/387
…entirely human.” Flattening his ears, he growled again and stepped back. “What are you?”
“I’m…not really sure myself.”
“Well.” The Wolf shook himself again, seeming to grow a bit more steady on his feet. “Whatever you are, you did not leave me behind, and I will not forget that. If you are in need of a hunter or someone to crush your enemy’s throat, you have only to call. Now…” He sneezed and bared his fangs, glaring around. “Where is that wretched feline?” Grimalkin, of course, had disappeared. The Wolf snorted in disgust and began to stalk away, but with a shiver and a loud grinding noise, the stone door started to rise.
We tensed, and I dropped a hand to my sword, but the spirits on the other side of the door had disappeared. So had the entire room. Instead, a long, narrow hallway stretched out beyond the frame, empty and dark, fading into the black. The cobwebs lining the walls and the dust on the f loor were thick and undisturbed, as if no one had walked this way in centuries.
The Wolf blinked slowly. “Magic and parlor tricks.” He sighed, curling a lip. “I will be glad to be done with it. At least in my territory, things are honest about trying to kill you.” He shook his great, shaggy head and turned to me. “This is where we part ways, prince. Do not forget my part in the story. I might have to hunt you down if you happen to forget, and I have a very long memory.”
“It’s a long way back to the wyldwood,” I told him, pulling out the small glass orb. The swirls of magic within left faint, tingling sensations against my palm as I held it up. “Come with us. We’ll return to the mortal realm, and from there you can easily find a trod to the Nevernever.”
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“The mortal world.” The Wolf sniffed and backed up a step. “No, little prince. The human realm is not for me. It is too crowded, too fenced in. I need the vast spaces of the Deep Wyld or I shal quickly suffocate.
No, this is where we say goodbye. I wish you luck, though. It was quite the adventure.”
The Wolf padded toward the dark, empty hallway, a lean black shadow that seemed to fade into the dark.
“You sure, Wolfman?” Puck called as the Wolf paused in the frame, sniffing the air for any remaining foes. “Like iceboy said, it’s a long way back to the wyldwood. You sure you don’t want a faster way home?”
The Wolf looked back at us and chuckled, f lashing a toothy grin. “I am home,” he said simply, and bounded through the door, melting into shadow.
His eerie howl rose into the air, as the Big Bad Wolf vanished from our lives and returned to legend.
Grimalkin appeared almost immediately after the Wolf had gone, licking his paws as if nothing had happened. “So,” he mused, regarding me with golden, half-lidded eyes, “are we returning to the mortal realm or not?”
I raised the globe but then lowered it, gazing at the cait sith, who stared back calmly. “Did you know?” I asked in a low voice, and the cat blinked.
“Did you know the reason Ariel a was here? Why she came along?” Grimalkin turned to groom his tail, and my voice hardened. “You knew she was going to die.”
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“She was already dead, prince.” Grimalkin paused and looked back at me, narrowing his eyes. “She perished the day you swore your oath against Goodfel ow. Faery brought her back, but she always knew how it would end.”
“You could have told us,” Puck chimed in, his voice f lat and strangely subdued.