Smart Wolves

From the title alone, I suppose I don’t even need to say this was done during my “Wolf-phase”. From about 3rd grade through 8th grade everything I wrote had to deal with Wolves in one form or another. This particular story I worked on for a couple of years (which seemed like an epic amount of time back then) from about 4th or 5th grade through 6th grade.

It all started out as a picture in National Geographic of two wolves running on the snow beneath the shadow of a plane. Presumably the shadow was just from the plane that was used to take the picture, but to my imagination the wolves were running away from hunters (or “wolfers”, as I once read these illegal wolf poachers were called.)

I cut the picture out, pasted it onto a piece of paper, and started to write a story about what would happen to these two wolves, who I named Snow Wolf and Slet. Like most of my childhood stories, I had no idea what would happen after I began, and some of the bizarre turns this story takes can be explained by keeping in mind I was simply making it up as I went along.

About the name Slet: I should clarify that in the naivety of childhood innocence I was blissfully unaware of how closely this name resembled a derogatory term for a sexually loose woman. It just sounded cool at the time, sort of like “sleet” but shorter. My mother brought it to my attention when I attempted to give a toy wolf the same name, but I was already several chapters into my story by that time, so I was stuck with it. (Remember this was back in the days when everything was hand written out on paper before the easy editing of word processors.)

Anyway, Snow Wolf and his female mate Slet are running, and they get caught by these poachers. Only instead of being killed for their pelts, they’re shot with tranquilizer darts, and handed over to a private scientist.

The scientist is named Jonathon Angle. He is demonstrating his new invention to his friend, professor Brown.

Although I don’t think I described it very well on paper, in my mind Jonathon Angle and professor Brown were very similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Jonathon Angle was the young brilliant scientist with the skinny angular body (as the name implies) and professor Brown was his more skeptical sidekick with a stockier build and a bowler hat.

Anyway, Jonathon Angle is demonstrating his new machine, which has the power to give human intelligence to animals and inanimate objects. He demonstrates it first on Snow Wolf and Slet, and then on a piano. Finally Jonathon Angle turns the machine on itself to give it intelligence as well.

The machine, by the way, is named JAM for Jonathon Angle’s Machine (seemed like a snappy acronym at the time). I envisioned it as this huge robot on wheels with an opening for pianos and wolves to pass under and be given the intelligence treatment. As the story progresses, it turns out JAM has a lot more neat Robot tricks as well.

Where was I? So, Snow Wolf, Slet, the Piano, and JAM all have had their intelligence increased, and can talk and reason now and participate in the conversation and all that stuff. Professor Brown says he’s sorry he ever doubted Jonathon Angle’s abilities. Jonathon Angle accepts the apology, and then says that the experiment was just for demonstration purposes, and for ethical reasons he now has to reverse the process and turn everything back to its original state.

The Piano however is horrified at the idea of loosing the gift of life, and runs out of the room. (Or zoomed rather. I think I had envisioned a piano on wheels). Everybody runs after the piano and tries to stop it. The piano zooms out of the house and is rolling down a hill when everybody is struck by lightening and disappears.

Everyone reappears in the middle of a cave and a small elf-like creature appears. It is at this point that we learn the lightening was not a natural phenomenon, but rather a ray of magic which had transported everyone to the cave.

I forget exactly what name I used for the cave creatures. They resembled elves with pointed ears and about half the height of a human, and although they are descended from the world of fantasy, I chose to give them a different name and species.

At any rate, the name of the creature who greets them is called Fown. Fown apologies to them for the inconvenience, and explains that they were experimenting with their transportation magic when they had an accidentally discharge which had enveloped Jonathon Angle, Professor Brown, JAM, the Piano, Snow Wolf and Slet and transported them to the cave.

Fown, by means of a magical portal, is able to show everyone his story. It began 1,000 years ago, when he and his race were ambushed by the Goblins. Fown, at that time just a young child, has to run for safety with the rest of his village. In the course of the flight, first his mother and then his father are killed by Goblin attacks. Finally everyone runs into a cave, at which point a rock slide permanently closes up the entrance, protecting them from the Goblins but also trapping them inside the cave forever.

Although Fown and his race are vulnerable to death from sickness or fatal wounds, if kept free from harm they have a potentially infinite life span. Thus Fown and his friends have spent the last 1000 years in the cave, mostly trying to find a way out. At last, through various experiments, they have found a way to transport themselves not only out of the cave, but back in time so that they can prevent the Goblin ambush in the first place.

Fown apologies, but now that the accident has already occurred, there will not be any extra energy to transport Jonathon Angle and his friends back out of the cave. The only option to get out will be to accompany Fown and his friends back in time.

They travel back in time where they are able to prevent the Goblin ambush. JAM, it turns out, has a laser attached to his machinery, and is able to take part in the fighting.

I was, at this time, greatly influenced by Tolkien, or at least the Rankin-Bass animated interpretation of his work. And, like many young fantasy fans before or since, I was unsure what was Tolkien’s invention and what was from traditional folklore. Therefore, in accordance with the animated version of the Hobbit, I had the Goblins riding on wolves. Of course at this stage in my life it went against everything I believed in to have the wolves as the bad guy, and so I interjected a scene in which JAM captures one of the Goblins’ wolves and analyzes it. JAM is able to discover that the wolves are under mind control by the Goblins’ magic. Since there is no cure, the only humane solution is to kill the wolves to put them out of their misery. And with that moral problem solved, Snow Wolf and the rest are free to enter the fight against the Goblins and their wolves.

Fown succeeds in saving his father and mother as well as his five year old self. With both the past and the future Fown now in the same story, the older Fown volunteers to rename himself Fown II in order to prevent any confusion.

The Goblin army is driven back, but the Goblin General vows revenge. Several minor attacks follow. During the middle of the night two Goblins on Wolves raid the house and carry off the younger Fown. Snow Wolf and Slet give chase, and manage to rescue young Fown, but Slet is stabbed in the chest during the fight and dies.

In the course of the story, for reasons I don’t remember, two other wolves join the good-guys team. I don’t remember what their names were, and I don’t remember the exact chronology either. They might have joined before Slet died. In fact, I think they did, because I remember having four wolves on the team.

While the skirmishes continue, the Goblin army is recruited to join in the fight between the Witches and the Warlocks. The Goblins, it turns out, are vassals of the Witches, and thus recruited to join in the fight. The Goblin leader keeps wanting to send out expedition forces to capture Fown and his family. At present the Goblin army has a force of 100 Goblins sent out to capture Fown; an extremely small fraction of the whole Goblin forces. But the head Witch eventually says even that is too much, so she sends another Witch out to bring back the 100 Goblins.

Meanwhile fighting continues. At one point Fown II is surrounded by Goblins and their wolves, and is able to fight only by his quick reflexes and guarding his neck from the wolves’ teeth. He is saved by the Piano who rushes in and uses his wooden frame to bowl the Goblins over. The Piano knocks the Goblins over several times, and, because he has no vital organs, is unhurt by the Goblin arrows. Until the Goblins use flaming arrows, and then the Piano catches on fire. In a last heroic effort the Piano uses itself as a flaming wreck to ram into the Goblins one last time before it burns away to nothing.

At this point the witch flying on a broomstick appears to recall the Goblins, and she also attacks the good-guys. JAM shoots the witch with his laser gun. The witch falls to the ground and screams out her death agonies. In her last minutes before Death, she manages to deliver the curse of the five rings.

This doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but at this point I realized the story wasn’t really going anywhere and so, like any fantasy writer who doesn’t know what to do next, I decided to come up with a quest to set my characters on. They have to find the five Golden Rings within a year, or they will all die. (Fown II explains this to the other characters. I think he might even have given some sort of short back story about what these five Rings are and how they came to be cursed as well, but I don’t really remember).

At this point, the team splits up in search of the different Golden rings. I don’t remember how many teams they split into, or who was in which group. Each group, however, encountered different adventures and gradually added new friends to their ranks. I fell into the trap, common to many fantasy writers, of wanting to find excuses to incorporate every single mythical creature into my story.

As the story branches out into many different directions, it is at this point especially that I start to forget the details. There was one part when Fown II and his group entered a strange city and got drawn into some sort of fight. A new character (a dwarf or an elf I think) had his arm completely cut off at the shoulder by an axe, and Fown II and the others nurse him back to health, at which point he joins the quest. (I remember having a conversation with my mother about someone’s chances of surviving this kind of wound. I had already devised a tourniquet to stop the blood in my story, but once my mother mentioned shock was also a problem I added that Fown II had used some of his magic to stop the shock.)

Another group is crossing a steep mountain trail. The Young Fown is, out of childlike curiosity, wandering dangerously close to the edge and singing a song. His mother yells at him to get away from the edge, but actually her sharp voice has the unintended effect of frightening Young Fown and causing him to fall over the edge. He is saved by a landing on a ledge below, but the ledge is starting to crack. Jonathon Angle instructs JAM to manufacture a rope (apparently another one of JAM’s powers), but JAM takes too long in doing it, and the ledge breaks and Young Fown falls off.

(I remember this was one of the first scenes in which I tried to build some tension in my writing. “JAM, we need that rope now.” “Almost finished.” “Hurry, the ledge is breaking.” “Almost finished.” Etc.)

He is saved by a fairy and her flying Unicorn. (I don’t remember their names, but they were pretty standard Fairy/ Unicorn names, like Rainbow or Moon Beam). After introductions are made, the fairy and the unicorn also join in the quest.

Another thing I remember near the end is an attempt to use the Smart Wolves story as an epic framework within which I could insert some of my other stories. I wanted to combine the characters from my “Three Giraffes” story into the Smart Wolves story. I figured since I was already writing in the Fantasy realm, the addition of talking Monkeys and Giraffes wasn’t a big problem. What was a problem was the addition of guns, which struck me as an anachronism in my fantasy world. So I re-wrote the “Three Giraffes” and gave the pirates bows and arrows instead of guns. It did seem a little strange to me to have pirates shooting arrows, but I figured this was a change I had to make in order to incorporate the two stories.
I had plans for incorporating the two stories together, but as far as I remember I never actually got far enough to when the characters from each story met up with each other.

I don’t remember much more of the details, and the story pretty much fades out after this point. I had plans for a huge dramatic conclusion (don’t I always) but eventually I lost interest in this story and just let it sit. Eventually I started working on other things.

This story is unique among the Lost Works in that I am guilty of deliberately and consciously throwing it out. Everything else just got lost under mysterious circumstances as time went on (personally I suspect my Mom’s cleaning). But this one I remember throwing out myself. It feel victim to my own cleaning.

I’m a bit of a messy person, and this is a habit I’ve had from childhood. And like most messy people, I tend to go throw long periods of mess and then strange bursts of cleaning. During one of those bursts, I decided I was never going to finish this story anyway, so I threw it out.

I have a lot of regrets in my short life, but this decision is right up there. Not because this was a great work of art, but because it was something I worked hard on for a while, and it shows my writing and my mind in transition. As it is now, I have almost nothing to show in between “Prisoner of the Pirates” and “The Wolf Clan”.

The reason I threw it out was because I was undergoing a transition in the length of my writing. Everything before this I had worked on for a couple days, and finished usually in a night, or a week tops. This was something I had worked on for months with no end in sight, and I thought that an unfinished story was no good hanging onto. Little did I know that everything I wrote after this would be an unfinished story, until I finally was able to bring “The New Era” storyline to a conclusion of sorts.

Influence on Other Works
This was my first serious foray into the World of Fantasy, and I decided I enjoyed it. I would return later with the Wolf Clan and the world of Fabulae.

I quite like the idea of household furniture becoming characters (like the Piano) and also having a past and present version of a character together on the same quest (Young Fown and Fown II). I’ve never re-used any of these concepts again, but I might some day.