Along Came a Wolf (The Yellow Hoods, #1): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale (3 page)

“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

“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.

Andre LeLoup drew his flintlock pistol and pointed it at the yellow-hooded girl as she started to moan and move. He gave Nikolas a serious look that stopped him in his tracks, six feet away.

LeLoup grinned menacingly. “It is rude to keep a man waiting when he is trying to be considerate—never mind when he has been sent by Simon St. Malo.”

Nikolas quickly scanned the cramped entranceway. While thinking about what to do next, he pinned the rod between his left arm and chest. He discreetly started cranking a small handle on the rod with his right hand. 

“I’m surprised,” said Nikolas, stalling for time, “that Simon St. Malo would send
you
.”

LeLoup’s face lit up. “You’ve heard of me?” he asked, desiring confirmation.

Nikolas nodded. “So—what does Simon want?” 

LeLoup grinned again. He enjoyed playing the game of cat and mouse. “You know, you are a hard man to find. It took me weeks to track you down. I would’ve moved on to the next town if I hadn’t encountered an extraordinary, yellow-hooded girl. I figured she might be tied to you somehow, and here we are,” he said, with a hint of evil playfulness. “It would be a shame if anything were to happen to her.” He gestured threateningly with his pistol.

“Congratulations, Monsieur LeLoup. You sniffed me out. Now ride back to wherever that rat is hiding and tell him the answer is
no
. Whatever his question is, the answer is
no
,” said Nikolas angrily. He finished cranking the rod’s handle.