How to Raise a Dumb Wolf - Chapter 2

His roar complete, the white cat—enormous by the standards of other cats—gave his fur a shake, licked one supreme and sovereign paw, then lounged back against his throne. Beastfolk attendants on either side hurried forward. One offered mouthwash in a golden goblet; others arranged fresh fruit, refreshments, and drinks before him, then produced fans to stir the air.

The lion king of the Grassland Kingdom, who weighed more than 600 jin (over 660 pounds), and the leader of the bear clan, who weighed more than 2,000 jin, both patted their chests in lingering fright and released the breaths they had been holding. His Majesty’s grandfather had weighed only 20 jin, and his father a mere 22 jin. Who could have imagined that His Majesty would grow to an astonishing 28 jin? A roar from a creature of such weight truly shook a beast to the soul!

More importantly, His Majesty did not weigh so much because he was fat and round as a ball of cat.

He was *big*.

Big!

Every beast gazed in awe upon the largest white cat the imperial family had ever produced, although beside certain other animals in the great hall, he looked no bigger than a punctuation mark.

Carter III finished rinsing his mouth and looked down over the assembled beasts. Only after giving them time to savor the majesty of the spectacle did he speak, slowly and with a trace of arrogance.

“…Has there been any progress on the darkfolk front?”

His Majesty’s voice possessed the crisp purity peculiar to cats, along with an authority that commanded fear without any show of anger. His tone was calm, with no apparent hint that anything was amiss. Yet the instant the question fell, the ordinary atmosphere in the hall froze. Silence descended.

Every creature present was either the king of a realm within the beastfolk empire or the leader of one of its great clans. Now, however, the beasts glanced at one another. Not one wished to speak first.

The battle report had, in fact, arrived early that morning. The beastfolk had eagles gifted in flight; a single night’s journey could carry them across the Divine Sea and bear news from the eastern reaches of the Ring Continent to the west. According to the intelligence they had delivered, the recent battle had been an overall success. It was only that…

“What is it?” asked the Beast Emperor. “Did we lose?”

The protracted silence alerted the proud white cat upon the throne that something was wrong. He frowned and swept his gaze over the fierce beasts who dared not raise their heads before him.

“Leonard. Speak.”

Leonard Leon was leader of the lion clan and king of Grande, the grassland realm in the south of the Empire of Beast. During council, he always stood nearest to the Beast Emperor. Ordinarily, the position was an honor that testified to his exalted status. At present, it was a burden.

Once called upon, he had no choice but to answer.

Leonard had been pressing himself desperately against the floor, trying to merge with the carpet and diminish his presence. His body gave a tremor. He shook out his splendid mane to bolster his courage, then rose.

“The battle unfolded precisely as Your Majesty predicted. General Salman led our soldiers to a splendid victory against a superior force. But…”

“Go on.”

“But—”

“Go on!”

Hearing anger enter the imperial voice at such close range, Leonard instinctively stepped backward. Only the memory of his dignity as a king enabled him to hold his ground. He gathered himself, then finally spoke in a grave voice.

“While carrying out his mission, Major General Les Wolf… became separated from the unit. To this moment… there has been no trace of him.”

The hall fell deathly still.

Only Leonard’s voice remained, droning mechanically as he continued his report with his head bowed. He did not dare look at His Majesty’s expression. His scalp prickled with dread.

Les Wolf was no ordinary commander.

He was the youngest and bravest major general in the empire’s history, the final scion of the Ancient Direwolf Clan, and a wolf cub raised on a cat mother’s milk. The boy possessed remarkable talent; all had witnessed his achievements from childhood to adulthood. His marks at the imperial palace had been no worse than those of His Majesty’s heirs. He had graduated from Wold, the Heart of the World, in record time, and in the five years since, he had won illustrious military honors in the conflicts with the darkfolk. He was a rare and promising young officer whose loss would be a terrible waste.

Most important of all… His Majesty cared deeply for him.

Major General Les Wolf’s parents had fallen in battle just after his birth. His Majesty brought the infant to the imperial palace and arranged for the mother cat then nursing the young princes and princess to feed him alongside them. Les was raised in the palace until he was twelve, then sent to the great Heart of the World for higher education. When Les chose a military career, His Majesty personally entrusted him to the lion general Salman and asked that he be looked after. The emperor’s care for the young wolf was plain.

The current heirs to the throne were not His Majesty’s children, either. Carter III had devoted himself to affairs of state year after year and remained unmarried. More than twenty years ago, over fierce opposition, he adopted his younger brother’s three children as his own heirs—two princes and a princess. All three had since grown into outstanding young beasts and awaited only further assessment. Under such circumstances, the little wolf reared on cat’s milk was naturally no different in His Majesty’s eyes from his own princes and princess.

Besides, Les was the last living descendant of the Ancient Direwolf Clan. The direwolves had always been the most loyal and powerful of Beast’s peoples, a mighty bulwark of the empire. His Majesty naturally did not wish the clan’s single remaining shoot to perish. Ideally, Les would choose a fertile wife from one of the empire’s other great wolf clans, marry her, and sire a great many mixed-blood wolf pups to restore his line.

Everyone knew that a soldier who vanished on the battlefield was unlikely to return. As for Major General Les Wolf’s mission in particular… his chances had been one in ten at best. The news would be a crushing blow to His Majesty. Worse, the strategy for this offensive had been devised by the emperor himself.

His own plan had killed the child he had raised himself. One could only imagine the shock and anguish in his heart.

When Leonard finished recounting what had happened, the silence in the hall deepened. No one spoke. No one dared look at the noble white cat’s face.

“…You mean to say that Les is missing?”

After a long while, Carter III flicked his tail. His expression betrayed nothing of his thoughts.

Leonard’s neck had never felt so stiff in his life, but he could not refuse to answer His Majesty. Several dozen agonizing seconds passed before he managed, with tremendous difficulty, to give the barest nod.

He had not even lowered his head all the way when, without warning, the white cat sprang from the throne.

Leonard thought his beloved emperor was about to claw him to death.

Then a heartrending feline howl split the air.

Carter III paced frantically back and forth before the hall, issuing one shrill, miserable cry after another. He tilted his head upward as though searching the ceiling for something, his despair and urgency all but bursting from his small feline body.

Aside from his cries, the hall was impossibly quiet. Everyone understood that the Beast Emperor was attempting to summon the spirit of the ill-fated Major General Wolf. Cats were said to possess the power to communicate across the boundary between worlds, to see what ordinary beastfolk could not—especially a great cat like His Majesty, whose eyes were two different colors.

Whether any of it was true, no one knew.

More than ten interminable minutes passed before Carter III finally ceased calling. He sat down where he was and stared motionlessly into the distance, as though he had turned into a statue of a cat.

Leonard, positioned near the front, exchanged a worried glance with the black panther beside him. He approached with the utmost caution.

“Your Majesty…”

The great white cat suddenly closed his eyes. The panic surrounding him seemed to vanish like smoke, and when he spoke, his voice was steady.

“Summon the High Priest. Have him divine Les’s location. Then use magic—or dwarven technology. I don’t care what you use. Contact him.”

The beasts’ eyes lit up at once.

“Your Majesty,” Leonard said in surprise, “do you mean…?”

“The wolf cub I raised could never die so easily.” Carter III paused. “Les must still be alive.”

…

Three days later.

Aisha stood alone in the kitchen with a knife in one hand and a particularly fresh tomato before her. She drew a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. Once her mind was calm and her spirits settled, she raised the knife with composure and—*chop*—cut the tomato in half.

Her knife work was not especially good. As soon as the blade came down, juice began to trickle from the tomato. Aisha hurriedly stilled her thoughts, closed her eyes, and placed her hands on either side of the two halves. She concentrated. Before long… a faint golden light appeared.

Ever since her grandmother’s death, whenever her father was away, she was the only person left in the house.

Loneliness was a frightening thing. It hollowed a person out and left her adrift. To keep herself from sinking into that emptiness, Aisha had been finding all sorts of things to occupy her time. In truth, she had plenty to do. She would graduate from basic school that very evening, and every girl her age was worrying about the future.

Should she pursue higher education? Find work? Or… marry?

Every choice meant uncertainty. Everyone wavered among the possibilities. Aisha had options of her own. Her poetics teacher had asked whether she wished to continue studying versecraft. The teacher had an old schoolmate at an academy in the Heart of the World and offered to write Aisha a letter of recommendation if she wanted one.

Aisha had not decided on the spot.

For one thing, her father had not yet returned, and she hoped at least to discuss the matter with her parents. For another… there was something she longed to study more than poetry.

She could feel something inside her, gathering, straining to surge free. She simply had not yet discovered how to release it.

She returned her attention to the tomato.

With her eyes closed, Aisha could perceive the severed tomato only through a hazy, indescribable intuition. At first the sensation darted around blindly. After a time, however, it gradually grew clearer. She could almost trace the texture of the cut surfaces, then the tiny seeds within, the intricate branching fibers. Next, she tried to steady her breathing and slowly stitch the halves together with the golden light—

Aisha’s ability was not limited to humans. Animals, plants, and even certain lifeless objects could receive her healing. Aside from the injured townspeople who occasionally sought her help, she sometimes treated sick livestock or crops for the local farmers. Her healing power was not very strong, however. It could mend only minor illnesses and injuries; anything serious still required a hospital.

The power had grown steadily stronger since Aisha discovered it at seven or eight years old. In recent years, though, it had abruptly ceased to change.

So Aisha had begun practicing alone, with little result. She had always been able to repair a small crack in a tomato, but never one that had been cut cleanly in two. She could not do it. No matter how she tried, she failed.

And yet some strange, inarticulate certainty told her that she *could*. She was missing only one small thing. A method…

All at once, Aisha sensed something different.

The golden threads under her control were naturally drawn to the two severed sides of the tomato. Each thread found its counterpart and pulled the matching edges together. Bit by bit, they joined, drawing closer and closer…

Aisha frowned in faint pain. She had never concentrated so intensely. The sensation was unfamiliar. She seemed to have entered a subtle state in which one more step would bring sudden clarity—like crawling through a cave that narrowed the farther she went. She could already see daylight at the mouth, but the passage ahead was just slightly narrower than her body.

If any advanced mage—or anyone with even a little understanding of magic—had witnessed the scene, learned that this girl had been born able to draw magical elements into threads, and realized that she had taught herself to refine those threads down to the level of individual cells, the shock might well have given them a heart attack.

Unfortunately, no one was there to see.

Aisha remained quietly immersed in a world of her own. That abstract world grew solid before her eyes. Then, in that instant, the tension around her heart abruptly released. It was as though she had finally discovered how to leave the cave. Her brow smoothed, and she gently relaxed her grip on—

“Aisha!”

She jolted. The light at the cave’s mouth vanished together with the gold between her hands. For a moment, she seemed unable to find her way out of that private world. She stared blankly, then turned, very slowly, toward the voice.

Mrs. Wesson from next door stood outside the window. Smiling, she tapped the glass with her knuckles.

“Oh, I’m sorry I interrupted your practice. Would you open the window for me, Aisha?”

Aisha hurried over and opened it. A basket hung over Mrs. Wesson’s arm, brimming with ribbons of every color.

“The Harvest Festival is almost here,” Mrs. Wesson explained kindly. “You’re old enough to tie a ribbon this year, and I made far too many, so I thought I’d bring you one. What color do you like?”

Aisha stared at the basket, at a loss for words.

Mrs. Wesson gave her an easy smile. “Don’t be shy. These are only the ones I couldn’t sell, and all the other girls already have theirs. Besides, you treated our Fred’s injury just the other day, didn’t you? Hmm… let me think. How about this? I think white would suit you. Here, take this one.”

She drew a white ribbon from the basket and placed it in Aisha’s hand, then added with motherly care, “Remember to tie it to a branch in the grove before this evening. The higher, the better. You might find yourself a handsome boyfriend as soon as next month.”