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Once upon a time, a great king ascended to the throne. Although he was young, untried, the royal advisors whispered at first in worry, his people were well pleased with him. Not only did he rule wisely and with fair reason, but with good humor. His winsome manner and mirthful joy won over all who attended his court.
His decisiveness in negotiating between all the competing factions within the kingdom earned the goodwill of his citizens, who lived in peaceful times that generations before could only have dreamed of. Skilled with sword and blade he was indeed, but the dexterity with which he wielded his words rendered his military prowess unneeded.
Stories of his might and tales of his goodwill were told and retold before the hearths of great mansions and beside the humble outdoor campfires of small villages both.
In those days, the country was wide and wild. Royalty traveled from mountain to plain and valley, stopping to set up grand tents and hold court, so every liege could attend to his ruler, and the people could make their petitions known.
King Ryan counted many friends among the loyal fellowship he traveled with, many knights and courtiers of honor, all true of heart and kind yet strong.
But everyone knew his very favorite, the one who was most often called to Ryan’s side for counsel, and the one who accompanied him to his bedchamber at night, was Sir Shane.
Some of the more envious courtiers referred to him as Shane the Nameless, for although the king had given him title and rank, he appeared to lack a family within the kingdom and therefore did not carry with him the weight of a surname. No one knew from whence he came, and if someone ventured to ask, he’d parry the question with a joke and a smile.
One evening, as was his custom, King Ryan heaved a sigh after a long day of holding audiences, set aside his finely embroidered tunic and breeches, and lounged, naked, against the carved headboard of his bed. Sir Shane similarly shrugged off his layers of woolen vest and tunic and undergarments, filled both their cups from one of the full jugs on the sideboard, and settled in, drawing in the bed curtains around them.
Soon enough they were ensconced in deep conversation, laughing and drinking wine, Ryan’s legs entangled with Shane’s bare legs. Shane smiled at him over his sturdy earthenware drinking-cup and reclined on an elbow at the foot of the bed.
“You never take off that necklace,” King Ryan observed, “even when you’ve taken off everything else.”
Shane huffed a laugh, causing the necklace chain of hammered gold to glint on his bare chest. “‘Tis true,” he reflected. His long fingers touched the small round locket that hung from the chain, gold with handsome inlays of garnet cloisonné.
“Does it distress you?” Shane asked.
Ryan sipped his wine for a moment, letting its sharp acidity bathe his tongue, as he regarded the long length of his lover. Of his Shane, naked upon the eiderdown duvet, the light softly filtering in through the bed curtains. His face in shadow as his shoulder-length blond hair fell across his cheek like a drapery itself.
“No, it doesn’t vex me,” Ryan decided. “It’s simply a matter of curiosity.”
Shane pushed his hair out of his eyes and the king’s heart fluttered, so much like the manner in which the messenger pigeons flapped their wings in excitement when Ryan approached their cages with a scroll for them to carry.
“Then let’s say it reminds me that I am a man. Will that satisfy you?”
Ryan regarded Shane with an implacable eye. Shane, for his part, withstood this with his usual easy amiability.
Ryan found himself unable to suppress a smile from his face. “What riddles you present me with! It seems impossible for me to ever forget that I am a man.”
Shane gave Ryan a conspiratorial smile. “So you are witness to the injustices Fate deals. For not only is your eminence far more handsome and stronger in heart than I,” and here Shane paused to gesture to his own head, “large though my head may be, the memories it gathers are few, and those it retains far fewer.”
Ryan threw back his head and held his stomach in laughter. Shane was playing up to him, it was true, but Ryan couldn’t say the man didn’t delight him, always.
Encouraged, Shane moved closer and settled himself at Ryan’s side, grinning like a contented cat.
“You flatterer!” Ryan gasped, still breathless with laughter.
“So I stand accused,” Shane said. He took Ryan's hand in his own and kissed over his knuckles. “I throw myself on my king's mercy. Do with me what you will.”
The king traced his fingers through his love’s soft hair. Sometimes he could swear that Shane’s dark eyes had the power to bewitch him. “And yet I could never convict thee,” Ryan mused, “not of any offense or wrongdoing.”
The king bent down to place a kiss upon Shane’s lips. Shane made a noise, breathy and low, and returned his affection readily, as was his wont. When they separated an inch, to caress and touch, Shane’s rejoinder was stated so quietly that King Ryan barely heard it.
“Would the time never come,” he oathed, “that you should decline to convict me, were I to commit an offense against you.”
King Ryan pressed Shane into the bed. He admired the dark fan of his love’s eyelashes, the strong profile of his nose, the gentleness in his eyes. “You would never—could never—hurt me.”
Shane shook his head gently. “Were I accused, ‘twould be the truth, and I would deserve anything you choose to mete out as consequence.”
Ryan smiled and embraced his lover, kissing him deeply. “Then this I choose as consequence.”
King Ryan, shortly after waking, applied his daily unguent to his body, its scent cool like the ocean air. The wisest alchemist of the kingdom created it for him, a potion so scientific it was near-magical, which ensured the broadness of Ryan’s shoulders, the reliable low pitch of his voice, the beard which he glanced at in a mirror and decided to let grow for another day. For Ryan of the Green Valley, when he was small, had always known he would grow up to be a man—and, of course, a king—but knowing it himself was one thing, and seeing it confirmed in the hazy reflection of the looking-glass, and in the eyes of his subjects, was a quiet joy to him.
He thought about what it could be that Shane kept inside the locket he wore. He looked over at his sleeping figure, his mouth open in a soft snore, and thought about how he was the ruler now, and anything under the sun he requested would be his.
And yet Shane hadn’t answered, when he’d asked the evening prior. Instead, his eyes shyly looked away and Ryan had let the matter drop.
Magnanimously, the king decided that Shane could keep his secret to himself, if he liked. King Ryan held great power, it was true, ever able to obtain the truth from anyone he chose. It was a gift he used well in brokering agreements between nattering foes. Wisely, he chose to twine his strength with a gentleness of spirit, and found it was better to earn trust rather than demand it.
Ryan himself could never forget he was a man; it was knowledge he carried in his soul and in his heart. For Shane to need a reminder was not something Ryan could understand, not fully, but he allowed his subjects—all of his subjects—the range and freedom to do and think things that Ryan did not wholly understand himself.
He tugged his tunic over his head and buckled his heavy belt around his waist. Just then, Shane’s eyes fluttered open, and he gave a yawn bigger than the yawns of Ryan’s dachshunds when they rolled over in their dog beds after a hunt and showed all their teeth in contented exhaustion.
The king smiled, and just before he went to attend to the work of the day, he leaned down to brush a kiss against the lips of his beloved.
The leaves on the trees were still green, the last days of summer gilding the canvas of the tents with golden strands of sunlight, when the business of court was finished and the king and his attendants traveled home. They traded the royal canopies from which bright red flags flew for the king’s grand house of cross-timbered beams, where late summer’s harvest was just beginning to be brought in.
On the first day of autumn, when the balance between summer’s daylight and evening’s darkness was perfectly even, Shane was nowhere to be found.
The king looked for him, but to no avail. He did not allow himself to worry, surmising that Shane would return when he had had his fill of time spent by his lonesome. Ryan knew the man to occasionally indulge in such quietude, the call of the wide world outside their door too much to resist. He would while away a few hours, walking or reading, hidden away where the pine trees swayed, and soon enough he would be back at Ryan’s side.
So the king called his other courtiers, those he called his closest friends, to the manor. And they brought him the sweetest herbs to fill their pipes, the most toothsome of treats to fill the manor’s tables, and, of course, the gift of their jovial company. They passed the time in the most entertaining of ways, carousing in the highest of spirits, and then taking their repasts whenever they pleased.
King Ryan even took the most pleasing of his friends to his bed, knowing that the relationship between himself and Shane was not a jealous one. He ascended to the heights of pleasure during those days and nights of hedonism, and yet once the blissfulness of his sated body had passed, a seed of worry did take root in him.
He awoke early, after a night of restless sleep. A messenger found him pacing in the out-of-doors, among the chrysanthemums and pumpkin vines in the garden, the mist of the very early dawn still heavy in the air.
“What news have you?” Ryan demanded of the young woman. She startled and stepped back, clutching her navy woolen cloak around her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, softening his voice. “Fretfulness sharpens my words and manner.”
She nodded in understanding, took a deep breath, and began to rummage in her satchel.
He held a hand out, expecting a scroll or message of some sort. Instead, she placed on his palm a familiar locket, only a short strand of its broken chain still remaining threaded through its bail.
“Is he dead?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “We don’t know. Nothing else was found, save this.”
“He never goes anywhere without this,” the king said, his words melancholy.
“Everyone is looking for him,” the woman promised.
“And we shall, too,” one of Ryan’s friends announced, upon hearing the news. The other nobles nodded and promised all the help that they could muster. A great search was undertaken.
Autumn arrived, bright with leaves of gold and red.
The search continued.
Autumn tilted and swept into chill nights and the crunch of browned dead leaves underfoot. And still, there was no sign of Sir Shane.
An elderly woman, a storyteller by trade, stopped at the manor one night. King Ryan’s dinner guests that night were entertained by her captivating tales. She told a story of the bisclavret, the king’s favorite changed into a wolf by forces unknown. She wove tales of the olden days of legend, when men left their human bodies behind and became wolves.
Suddenly, Ryan exclaimed, “It couldn’t be true. What if it is true? Did the men ever come back?”
“Not often, but some did,” the old raconteuse said. “Some could take back the trappings of men and become their true selves again.”
“‘Trappings of men’?”
“Their clothes, a belt, a talisman. The stories vary.”
The guests, lords and ladies and nobles of neither persuasion— all—fell quiet. They watched the king and the woman in their repartee, eyes widening at the conversation, understanding the wild notion the king had taken as truth.
For surely the missing Sir Shane had not become a wolf. Legends and stories were just that: stories. And yet Ryan continued in his unshakeable quest for knowledge, neither looking to the left nor the right of him.
“How does one encourage one of these wolves to turn back?”
“You can’t force them; you can only entice.” She looked around at the now-quiet table. “I suggest an offering to the god of wolves. Food, perhaps.” Hardly daring to let on that she had grasped the implications of the king’s questions, she lowered her voice. “Or an ambrosia the man he used to be favored,” she answered kindly. “Anything that will help him remember.”
Ryan simply set his lips in a thin line, and nodded.
He called for the spiced wine and sweetmeats to be brought to table. The musician played the strings of his lute once more and merriment commenced again.
Late that evening, after all had gone to bed, a guardsmen saw the king, having wrapped his cloak over his nightshirt for warmth, carry an earthen bowl of fine wine to the oldest tree at the edge of the forest.
An offering to the wolf god, he murmured to himself, or a remembrance of Sir Shane?
Ryan had a new golden chain brought to him, the links sturdier than the last. He restrung it with Shane’s locket. He wore it always, never taking it off. The locket itself he never opened, vowing that Shane’s secret was his to keep and remained his to choose to share.
The king passed many sleepless nights. Hoping to cure his agitation, his loyal minders presented likely courtiers to his bedchamber. But none would do. Every comely face and every bedmate’s well-formed body only made him think of a long lanky man with sleepy eyes. And after all, King Ryan’s own arms were strong, his face handsome, his lineage royal. He was hardly one to be easily won over by an orgasm wrought by a clever mouth which only disappointed him in dull repartee afterwards.
He took to going out for long walks. Leaves crackled underneath the king’s footsteps. Accounts of wolves, dogs, even foxes in the area would make his heart leap. He feared that Shane knew that Ryan was near, but did not draw close, too afraid of the burning torches lighting up the manor, and the bustling energy of many villagers. So he walked, hoping that his Shane would see him, would sense his presence, and come to him. Would come home.
Finally, news of a sighting arrived to the king’s hands. A huge, light-haired wolf, big as a man, was stalking the forest. Ryan allowed his retinue to escort him so he could behold its huge pawprints in the wet earth.
Then more reports came in, as the nights pressed on. The great wolf absconded with a chicken, one of the villagers’. The wolf frightened the mules and horses in their shelters. The villagers were beside themselves.
The king listened to their woes. He made recompense to those the wolf offended by replacing their fowl. But when they asked leave to hunt the wolf, he issued a proclamation that the wolf was not to be hurt.
“The penalty for taking a chicken is not death,” he cautioned.
Chastened, they bowed their heads.
Winter had just begun to settle in when Ryan paced through the forest, watching through the bare branches of the trees and bushes for signs of movement. Sighing when movement proved to be a hare, or deer, or squirrel laying up its store of acorns.
The afternoon grew late, and Ryan’s steps slowed with fatigue. Then he saw the low sun reflected in two shining eyes. Beneath them was a long furry snout. Huge paws and a thick fur coat that glistened gold in the sunshine. A wolf, big as a man. Ryan gave a yell of exultation. The beast froze in place.
Ryan’s attendants grasped their swords. Seemingly accepting its fate, the animal bowed its head.
The king turned on his own guard with fury in his eyes, ordering them to stand down. They had sworn to protect their king, but found themselves overawed in the sight of such anger.
King Ryan, alone, advanced toward the wolf. In turn, it kept its head low, its eyes to the ground, as if in supplication.
“Stay,” the king said, his voice plaintive in the forest clearing. His sword gleamed at his belt, but he did not draw it.
He reached out his arms in a sudden movement, as if he meant to embrace the wolf. His courtiers could only look on in horror, afraid the king barreled towards his own end.
Startled, the beast growled and snapped at air. It did not fall upon him with its jaws, as the onlookers feared it would, but instead lashed out with one big paw. Four great slashes appeared on King Ryan’s arm where the wolf struck.
Four lines of red welled up on the king’s skin, and drops of blood fell to the ground, staining it scarlet.
“Hold!” the king called. He threw his arms wide to halt the movement of his guards to answer the wolf’s injury. The wolf emitted a pitiful bark, and dashed off into the forest.
Ryan was escorted back to the manor, where the royal medical attendant tended to his wounds.
“It’s not his fault,” Ryan said. He passed his fingers over the pendant of Shane’s he still wore. “I frightened him and he lashed out in fear, not malice.”
“‘Tis a brave thing,” the medical man said, “to show such mercy to a beast like this. So brave, the scolds among us might mistake it for foolishness.”
“He’s still my subject. Deserving of warmth and care," he said. To himself he added, "Even if he has forgotten he’s a man.”
“The Wolf King, ye be,” the old man said. He patted the bandage in place over the healing poultice he’d placed upon Ryan’s forearm. “King and benefactor of men and wolves both.”
And indeed, the tale spread through the taverns and meadhalls of the village, and then across the plain and over the mountains of the territory. In every place King Ryan had visited, the story of the Wolf King, brave in encountering the wolf and merciful to the beast, was wassailed.
A great painting was created of the Wolf King: a golden circlet on his curls, a drinking-cup in his hand, and the other hand buried in the fur of the great wolf that curled, alert and on guard, beside the king’s woodcarved chair. The painter displayed it and at once it became a sensation; copied and imitated by many other artists. Nobles had to have a version to display in their homes; taverns had framed on their walls fine pencil-sketches of the same motif.
The treasurer of the realm and the overseer of the mint met and they struck a new coin of the kingdom. Instead of Ryan’s youthful profile, the new specie portrayed this confident Wolf King, mature and regarding the viewer with equanimity, his guardian wolf at his side.
The nights grew colder. Midwinter drew near. King Ryan wrapped himself up in his heaviest woolen cape and walked the forest’s edge. The dogs of the manor had barked and barked all morning, tiring the household with their noise. The wolf had to be close by.
Finally, he caught a tremor of movement out of the corner of his eye. A twig snapped. He saw the glow of yellow eyes.
“Shane,” Ryan said, his voice taken up by the chill breeze that whistled through the bare tree branches.
The king knelt in the snow, fearing for a moment that the great light-haired wolf had become an animal that did not love him, and he would shortly be torn to shreds.
But the wolf approached slowly. Almost shyly. Within steps of him, it bowed its head and stretched out its front paws. Ryan closed the distance carefully. He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around the wolf. Its fur had tangles of brush in it, its paws dirty, its jowls matted with blood. And yet it felt like it sighed and sagged with relief against Ryan.
Ryan wiped his face, realizing he was crying as his teardrops crept into the animal’s fur and made divots into the frozen snow.
Finding Shane again, for he was sure that this was him, had made Ryan forget. He almost laughed with the realization: that Shane could entice him into forgetting. Forgetting so much that Ryan felt he could also change into a wolf. But no, Ryan could do the remembering for the both of them. He took a deep breath and chose to do the remembering for the both of them.
“Never forget that you’re a man,” Ryan whispered. He took the necklace from around his own neck, the one with newly-forged golden links from which Shane’s pendant hung, and draped it ‘round the wolf’s neck.
In an instant, he felt bare skin underneath his hands. Bloodied and dirty he was, but Sir Shane he was again, his human nakedness offering no protection from the cold. Ryan unbuttoned the fine horn buttons that held his red wool cape secured to him, and wrapped it around Shane.
“Ryan,” Shane murmured, with quietness from disused vocal chords. Ryan covered him with kisses, and they both wept after their long separation.
He supported Shane home, stumbling with tiredness as he went. His bare feet echoed against the stone floors, the guards and courtiers they passed astonished at Sir Shane’s return. They prattled excitedly, but their noises simply eddied around and outside Ryan’s consciousness.
Probably they had thought Shane dead, and gossiped about King Ryan’s lovelorn foolishness behind his back. They could think what they want, Ryan decided, for he always knew he was right and Shane was alive.
The king tended to his love, and every day he grew stronger and more himself. The locket remained secured around Shane’s neck.
Until an evening came, after the end of dinner, just the two of them together, and Shane gave voice to his thoughts.
“You’ve never known,” Shane said, looking down at the chain he held between his forefinger and second finger. “You’ve never known what it is that makes me remember that I’m a man.”
Ryan simply shook his head.
Shane came over to kneel by Ryan’s side, and offered up the locket into Ryan’s palm. “Open it.”
Ryan worked the tiny clasp and the fastening sprung open. Within its gilt exterior he found a lock of dark hair. With a jolt, he recognized it as his own, given as a gift so many years ago.
They had lain in each other’s arms, in the springtime of their companionship, and Ryan had offered Shane anything he wanted. Lands, titles, riches. Anything within Ryan’s grasp, as prince of the realm, he told his subject he could have.
Shane had only blinked languidly at him. Then traced fingers through Ryan’s hair, as he had laid his head on Shane’s chest. A lock of Ryan’s hair he had asked for, and a lock of hair he had received, when they had come back to the house and Ryan had acquired a short blade sharp enough to cut hair and laughingly handed the tool into Shane’s hand, to take what he had requested.
A lock of Ryan’s hair Shane had worn ever since, secreted into the garnet-and-gold locket and kept next to his heart. Reminding him he carries the soul of a man.
It was later that night that Ryan took Shane to his bedchamber, and whispered in his ear what it was he wanted, now that he could think of the future. An heir. A continuation of his kingly line.
Shane kissed him deeply, and touched his body reverently, and acquiesced to his king’s wishes.
King Ryan, the Wolf King, bore a child, sure and strong. His knights who had borne their own children served as midwives and advisors as he labored in childbed. Sir Shane never left his side, even when it meant his tired head fell on the bed and he succumbed to fatigue for a short while, Ryan’s hand still clasped in his own.
His child was born perfect, for how could a baby be born any other way? And the songs sung of the Wolf King, brave and strong, now included paeans to his line, so powerful and eternal that King Ryan needed no consort to continue his dynasty.
And at the festival hall, Shane’s eyes crinkled in glee and he sang along to the dithyrambs and rhymes honoring Ryan the Wolf King, Ryan the Brave, Ryan the parent of his line. He raised a drinking-cup and toasted King Ryan along with all the others.
They spent many years together. When Ryan laughed, Shane laughed with him, and when trials came to them, they gave each other comfort, and many a time Ryan came to bed, tired and exhausted from his duties, and Shane kissed him tenderly to sleep.
When Shane placed his big hand over the faded pink scars on Ryan’s forearm, and winced at how the four slashes neatly matched his own fingers, Ryan just regarded him tenderly. “This I choose as consequence,” he reminded Shane, and cupping Shane’s jaw in his hands, kissed him.
When sufficient age and reason had been attained, the king’s child decided they would be known as Princess of the realm.
The king ruled, wisely and well, with gravitas and reason, until it was her time to accede to the office of ruler.
The king had reached a mature age, and so had his companion, who rarely left his side. The ceremony of Ryan’s stepping-back into retirement and his daughter’s stepping-forth into the office of Queen was completed with much food and wine and great joy. She wore the golden circlet of the realm on her dark curls and promised to rule in continued peaceful times, as her father had done.
Late that evening, a howl was heard in the royal manor-house. It was shortly joined by a second howl. The elders spoke amongst themselves of how much like the great wolf it sounded, long ago. The young people scoffed that the Wolf King’s companion was just a story, a myth passed into history. But those who had attained a great age, the ones within the kingdom who remembered, knew what it was they heard.
The former-king appeared at the breakfast table the next morning, hale and hearty. He was seen to wear a gold locket himself, this one incised with the green stone of emerald. It was new and shining, unlike the worn dull shine of the pendant Shane wore. When Ryan’s necklace caught Shane’s eye, he would smile so fondly that it was as if there were no one else in the world save Ryan and Shane.
And the scars on Ryan’s arm, which he had carried with him since that day in the snow with the great wolf, had healed so well that they disappeared.
A year into the Queen’s reign, when the former king was assured of the calmness and steadiness of her rule, he kissed his daughter’s forehead and murmured a blessing over her.
He wore warm woolen clothes and dressed for long travel. After saying his goodbyes, he took Shane’s arm, and together they walked into the green forest.
That night, the wolves howled and howled and would not be silenced.
Weeks passed and not a single word was heard from either the Wolf King or his companion. But a young boy, a shepherd, approached the court of the young Queen and presented the objects he’d found hanging together from a tree branch.
Gold lockets, both. One garnet cloisonné inlaid in gold, the other still showing the green depth of emerald. One containing a lock of curly dark hair, the other a twist of thick blond hair.
People say they see them, sometimes. Always together, a blond wolf and a dark one. For men who become wolves are undying. Or so the legends say. The two wolves run along the forestline ridge, quiet on their big paws, always watching. They have never left the kingdom, and people say they never will.
The bard in the meeting-hall says if ever the people need King Ryan again, he will remember the man he is and return to them. The troubadour argues, instead, that a knight brave enough to bring the golden talisman lockets to the great wolves can summon them again.
In the meantime, the lockets hang in a place of honor in the old Wolf King’s great manor hall, their golden chains interlinked together.
And the two great wolves-who-were-men roll and play together and are never, ever seen apart.
Sometimes their two howls are heard combining into one harmonious sound, carried down to the valleys on the breezes of fresh mountain air.
For they may forget that they are men, but they cannot forget each other.