Her Judges Are Evening Wolves

"Her Judges Are Evening Wolves", originally titled "Naantam, Naantam", is the first story in The Dogs: Before Time After, and the first story chronologically in the Dogsverse timeline, although important events did take place before it. It tells of how, when, where, and why the Lightfoot dynasty was founded.

Opening quote
"They have supposed there is something in the soil, climate, and other circumstances of America, which occasions animal nature to degenerate, not excepting even the man, native or adoptive, physical or moral."

- Thomas Jefferson, Notes On the State of Virginia

Title
Like all stories in Before Time After, the title is derived from the King James Bible, in this particular case Zephaniah 3:3: "Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow."

Original title
When the story was first submitted to SoFurry in May, 2015, the title was "Nantaam, Nantaam," which is Powhatan (the local language of the Native Americans which the Tucker brothers would have interacted with) for "Wolf, Wolf." This was a reference to Andrew Tucker's grisly fate. However, the title was changed in November, 2017, to fit with the rest of the theme in Before Time After.

Themesong
The themesong for this story is Roy Davis Jr. & Erin Martin - "I Have A Vision (Fred Falk Remix)".

Synopsis
At dusk on 30th April 1634 -- Walpurgis Night -- Andrew Tucker, an English colonist to Virginia, becomes lost in the Tidewater wilderness out hunting. He comes upon the wigwam of a locally famous herbalist, deep in a pecan tree forest on the banks of the Warraskoyak (the James River).

This herbalist, whose name is Ohawas, the Crow Witch-Woman, is implied not be from the local Powhatan tribe, even though they sometimes call on her for astrological and medical matters. She is whispered to be far older than she looks, and while she is regarded with reverence from the natives, she is outright feared by the English colonists. She is the source of many rumors, such as how some of the animals that prowl near her home were once human.

Ohawas takes sympathy on the lost Englishman, and takes him in, and they sup together on the turkey that Andrew had shot out hunting.

Later that evening, Andrew is tempted to take advantage of Ohawas sexually, and rape her, just as it was implied that he did to a baker's daughter back in Chichester some time ago. But before he can make his move, Ohawas fights back with preternatural strength, blowing smoke in his face and chasing him away from her wigwam.

Ohawas' smoke causes Andrew to hallucinate horribly, and then to hideously (but only partially) transform into a misshapen half-wolf creature. He flops and crawls away, in terrible agony, howling, no longer able to make human words.

About this time, Andrew's brother Nicholas Tucker is out looking for his missing brother with his hunting dog, Boy, who discovers something sinister: the grotesque half-animal that his brother has become. Realizing that the rumors of the Crow Witch-Woman are true, and that -- by the color of the creature's eyes -- the monstrous thing his dog has found is indeed his brother, Nicholas shoots and kills Andrew with his musket out of mercy. He then reports back to the settlement that his brother had gotten lost and vanished, like many others before him.

For months after this incident, the English colonist community suspects Nicholas is lying, and eventually realize that Andrew Tucker met a bad end due to some kind of Native involvement, never understanding (since Nicholas only tells his son many years later as he lays dying) that it was the Crow Witch-Woman who ultimately destroyed him. The colonists put mounting pressure on Nicholas to do something to avenge his brother's death, until Nicholas can take it no longer, and journeys into the western mountains to find a new life.

Nicholas' purported cowardice does not go unnoticed, however, and Governor Harvey notes that "though Tucker had not a heavy heart of iron he had at least a swift, light foot," which becomes a nickname, Lightfoot, which Nicholas finds he cannot, to his horror, ever shake.

A little later, however, after Nicholas dies journeying with General Wood into the west, his son, also called Nicholas -- though later known as Nicky -- decides to adopt the moniker as their surname. Thus the Lightfoot dynasty is born.

Textual history
Originally meant to be a direct homage to Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves", a story which deeply influenced the development and writing of The Dogs, the action was meant at first to be set in Poland, but was changed very early in development to be set in Colonial Virginia. Soon after, Veidt realized it could be set in the Dogsverse. Thus, the story (using the production code Indian) became the second completed entry outside of the main novels to bolster the extended Dogs universe; the first was "Rat Prince."

The surname of the main characters, Tucker, is a reference to Andrew Lightfoot's original last name, Tucker-Carter, before it was changed to Lightfoot -- the story can almost serve as a metaphor for this creative decision.

An early version of the story was being written on 3rd May 2015, with a finished version submitted to SoFurry on 6th May. (It is for this reason that Nicholas Tucker's birthday is also 6th May). Written simultaneously with "Forests of the Noonday Sun", it is the first completed story from the productive summer of 2015.

Connections to other stories

 * The most obvious connection to the rest of the Dogsverse is that Nicholas Tucker, through his son, Nicky Lightfoot, is the progenitor (but not founder, technically) of the Lightfoot dynasty.
 * Maximilian, the leader of the night-watch who confronts Nicholas Tucker, is said to have disappeared off the Spanish Main fighting the Great Gasparilla. He is thus hinted to be none other than Tooth, the Sharkman, from "Depths".
 * Ohawas is said to disappear some years after this incident happened, but there are repeated inferences that a race of proto-indigenous witch-people live and lurk in Virginia, West Virginia, and possibly North Carolina. References to this are found in nearly every Dogsverse story.