Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold

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Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold Page 45

by Paula Guran


  Instead, I pull me cloak tighter round me shoulders and stick out me chin like me stepfather does when he gets mean and no nonsense. “Granmama were like you,” I says. “Weren’t she?”

  “No.” The woman runs a flattened palm over the stain on the floor, slow and gentle. She lifts her hand to her face and sniffs, then licks at her fingers with a bright pink tongue. When she looks back at me, her eyes be all aglitter. “I were like her.” She makes a gruff, throaty sound, not really a growl, not really a sob, as she pushes herself to her feet. Her first couple of steps towards the fire be wobbly as me baby brother’s but she soon rights herself. “Been a while since I went on two legs.” Where her thighs meet, the hair be dark as the rest of her legs, dark as me Mam’s down there as well, but thicker. A corkscrewed tangle of black curls that spread and spike almost up to her belly button.

  I turn back to the flames; me face can’t get no hotter.

  The woman kneels, then tips back me hood and runs a hand through me hair. It still be damp from the mill pond but she be gentle, like me Mam would be. Each time her fingers snag on a knot she stops to work it loose. “You and me have talking to do, Little Red,” the woman says in that rough, scratchy voice of hers. “You need to tell me about your Granmama, about what happened here. You need to speak for her, what can’t speak for herself no more.”

  Me stomach clenches. Bile scrapes at the back of me throat. I don’t want to remember what happened today. What I seen, or thought I seen. (What I know I seen.) Better to keep that all squashed down hard inside me guts so it blackens and rots like cabbage left in the ground and I don’t need to think on it no more. Just turn it and till it and seed it over fresh.

  “Who you be?” I says, jerking free from those gentle hands as I twist round to face her. “Who you be to be pawing at me and asking for me Granmama’s story like you got some kinda right to it?”

  The woman sits back on her heels. “I gotta right to it,” she says, quiet and careful. “Your Granmama were me mother, Little Red. I got more right to her story than any soul you care to name.”

  I don’t believe her at first, or I don’t wanna believe her. The weight of it be too heavy to hold, too hard to carry. Me Mam had a sister, that be true. A sister who went away before I were even born, who skipped off with some fella what made wicked eyes at her and promised her the whole of the Moon, or so me Mam says. She don’t talk too much about it. When she does, her face gets all sorrowful and less solid somehow, like you might break it with a breath.

  I never wanted a sister, if that be what loving one gets you.

  But now I peer at the woman real close, and she pulls that dark mess of hair outta her face, and there be that same quirk in the corner of her mouth that me Mam gets when she be worried about an eggbound hen, or whether the flour might stretch to a last loaf of bread, and I try to picture this woman being plumper in the cheeks, rounder all over like me Mam, and I think maybe I can see it.

  “So you me aunt?” I says.

  The woman nods. “That I am.”

  “And you a wolf, too? And me Granmama were a wolf?”

  “Not for always, but there were some moons she ran with us.” She smiles. “Some months even.”

  And in that smile, me Mam and me Granmama both be shining bright, and me tears start spurting before I can stop them. “She ch-changed,” I says. “Needed to sh-show me, she says.” The woman reaches out, squeezes me shoulder and the words, they spill from me like beads poured from a pouch. I tell her everything I can remember, not in any kind of order but just as it comes into me head, one big jumble for her to gather up and winnow as she please.

  “This axe-man, he be your mother’s husband?” she asks after I can speak no more. Her voice has lost its rougher edges; her tongue be steel-tipped.

  “He don’t mean to kill Granmama; he took her for a wolf—an ordinary wolf, I mean.”

  Her nostrils flare. “But he did mean to kill this ordinary wolf?”

  “It were gonna eat me, he thought.” Guilt makes a hard, cold lump in me throat; it hurts to swallow round. “Were me own useless screaming that brung him here.”

  The woman stares at me, head tilted to the side. I can only match her gaze for a moment. “That fire of yours be dying,” she says at last, pushing herself up from the floor. “You ain’t got the touch for flamework.” She rolls her shoulders and rubs at her arms. Her skin be goosepimpled, her nipples chilled to hard, brown nubs. “I forget how it be to be furless.”

  I poke at the half-burned logs, not really expecting them to catch. Me stomach turns queasy and sullen, like I been gorging on apples filched too early in the season, and me eyes itch from crying. Rocking back and forth, wishing I could wind it all backwards, wind meself right back to this morning and start on over. I wouldn’t scream this time, wouldn’t say nothing or do nothing but kneel down and wrap me arms round me Granmama’s neck and press me face to her soft, wolfish fur.

  “Must have big ears, your mother’s husband. To have heard you all the way through them woods.”

  I wipe me nose and look up. The woman has put on me Granmama’s nightdress, the one with tiny yellow and blue flowers embroidered round the collar. It stretches across those broad shoulders right enough, but then hangs too big and billowy, missing me Granmama’s bosom and hips to shape it proper.

  “Ever get to wondering why he be snuffling round so close?” The woman climbs into me Granmama’s bed and pulls the blankets up to her sharp and pointed chin. “Why he be following on your heels, Little Red?”

  I lay the poker aside and hunker down into me cloak, trying not to think on how he been looking at me different this past year. Sneaky glances out the sides of his eyes when he supposes I ain’t paying him much mind. Me chest ain’t nothing like me Mam’s yet, or me Granmama’s, but it ain’t dead flat no more neither. And he been looking. A shudder runs up me spine. With the fire down to embers, the house be getting cold.

  “You meaning to sit there all night like some poor senseless cub left out in the snow?” The woman lifts up one side of the bedclothes. “Plenty room for your scrawny behind.”

  I half expect her to take me in her long, strong arms and cuddle me, the way me Mam used to do when I be sick or fever-ridden, or when I woke up in the night from dreams I didn’t wanna remember. Or maybe it be more of a wish, cause when she rolls over instead, her back curving away in a bony arc, I feel so sad and hollow I nearly start crying all over again.

  “What those wolves be doing?” I ask after a time. “Down where I pulled Granmama from the pond?”

  “Won’t be there no more,” she says. “They’ll have taken her, those what can make themselves hands for hauling. Rest of the pack be guarding their passage.”

  “Where to?”

  “We got our own ways to farewell the dead. Our own places to honour them.”

  I think on the little churchyard in our village and the vicar with his black robes. Me Mam’s never had much patience for preaching or church learning and he frowns at us whenever we cross paths at market or along the road. She just smiles and nods and sometimes, if her arms ain’t full of sewing or vegetables or me baby brother, she even curtsies. Always be polite to that man, she tells me. Ain’t nothing in that fat little book of his’ll teach you more’n what me or your Granmama can, but he thinks it gives him power. Let him think it, him and other men like him, and you go on your way knowing better.

  “Shouldn’t you be there?” I whisper. “With the other wolves, saying goodbye to your Mam?”

  “I should,” the woman says. “Yet here I be with you, Little Red.”

  “That ain’t me name,” I tell her.

  “Maybe it be your wolf name,” she says.

  I take a careful breath then inch across the bed till I be pressed tight against her back, the two of us snug as roosting hens. She makes a soft sort of growling sound but don’t move or shove me away, and so I risk laying me arm across her hip. Her rich, earthy scent be strange and strong, but it don’t hide
the smell of rosewater from me Granmama’s nightdress, not wholly, and so I sniff deep and deeper still, pulling the both of them into me, me Granmama and me new gruff aunt whose words catch in me heart like a fishhook.

  Maybe it be your wolf name.

  We be about halfway home when me aunt stops sudden and grabs me by the arm. She sticks her nose in the air and sniffs hard, then closes her eyes and keeps very still, like she be trying to catch some faint or distant noise. All I can hear be the birds squawking out their morning songs, and I be about to walk on when she drags me off the path and behind a thatch of prickle-bush.

  “Do not move,” she whispers. “Do not speak.”

  Frightened, I do as I be told.

  After only a moment or two, there come the sounds of footsteps, the strides long and sure. Peering through the dense leaves, I see enough to know him, that axe swinging sharp in his hand as he heads back the way we come. Back towards me Granmama’s house. I hold me breath and look down. Me aunt be clutching me hand tight and I notice a smear of jam on the cuff of her sleeve. Strawberry or raspberry or maybe even boysenberry—she were up with the sun, opening every jar of preserves in the larder and spreading them thick on chunks of bread from the loaf me Mam baked.

  I forget the marvel of such food; wolves have no tongue for sweet.

  If we hadn’t left when we did—

  If I weren’t so keen to get home to me Mam who must be worried near outta her wits—

  If we still be there, scoffing down jam and trying to find some smock and kirtle that fit me aunt better’n old flour sacks, while the front door burst open and he come storming in—

  I bite down on me lip, not wanting to think on it.

  “That him?” me aunt asks after he be far outta earshot. “That your mother’s husband?”

  I nod, and she makes a low growling noise then pulls me to me feet. We move quicker now, not stopping for breath till we reach the cottage and find me Mam out front with me baby brother stuck on her hip, tipping out breakfast scraps for the chickens. She sees us too and her face come over all changeable, like she surprised and angry and excited all at once and don’t know what she should be feeling most.

  Then she drops the scrap bucket and marches across the yard. “Take him,” she says, thrusting me brother into me arms. “Now get inside and keep your ears to yourself.”

  I start to explain, start to apologise, but she just roars at me to get your arse inside right now, and so I go as fast as I can manage it, what with a newly squawling brat trying to kick and wriggle his way free of me grip. I don’t think I ever seen me Mam furious enough to be trembling.

  I plop me brother down in his cradle and scout round for the bit of leather he likes to gnaw on, but me Mam probably has it in her apron pocket. No matter, even I can tell it ain’t his teeth that be bothering him this moment. “Shhh,” I says, finding his rag dolly stuffed down the side of the bedding. “Shhh,” I says again, waving it in his face. “She weren’t yelling at you; it be me she mad at.”

  I leave the dolly on his chest and scurry over to the window for a peek. They both still out there in the front yard, me Mam with her back to the cottage so I can’t see her face, and me aunt stooped a little, her hands moving in a quick, urgent language all their own. No one be yelling no more, excepting me baby brother who don’t seem to have no use for his dolly today, so I can’t hear a word of it through the window. But I keep watching as me aunt reaches out for me Mam and me Mam shrugs off her touch like it belongs to some beggar woman, as fingers point and heads shake with anger and then with sorrow, as me Mam finally steps forward and sags into me aunt’s chest and their arms wrap round each other’s waists and they both crumple to the ground like they got not a single leg bone between them.

  Me aunt looks up over the hitch and shake of me Mam’s shoulders, looks up and stares me straight in the eye, and all of a sudden I feel like a thief caught with some treasure I ain’t got no right to be holding.

  I lurch away from the window and go back to me baby brother. I waggle his dolly about and pull me face into silly shapes and blow farting noises through me lips till he starts to giggle. He reaches out with his pudgy little hands and I let him grab me finger. I even let him suck on it a little. “You not too bad,” I tell him, tickling his tummy with me other hand. “For a stinky little goblin.”

  We be sitting like there that when the cottage door opens and me Mam and me aunt come in, both of them with eyes swollen from crying.

  “Boil some water, Little Red,” me aunt says. “Strong talking gonna need strong tea.”

  Me aunt drips four slow spoonfuls of honey into her cup and stirs it counterclockwise. “Our family always been wolves, long back as can we remember. We always been wolves and we always been secret, till time come it needful to tell. This secret be the most important one you ever gonna keep.”

  I fasten an imaginary button over me mouth. “I won’t tell a soul, I promise.”

  “This ain’t no game,” me aunt snarls. “Swear it on your life, swear it on your mother’s life—for it might come to that, up to the end.”

  Startled tears prick at me eyes. Me Mam reaches across the table to lay a hand over her sister’s. “Don’t scare the girl, Rachel. She been through enough already.” She turns back to me and her face be so kind I just wanna curl up in her lap and have her stroke me hair, like she used to do when I be littler. “But you need to understand,” she says. “You never talk to no one about this who ain’t wolf. No matter if you think they your best friend in the whole world, or if they even more to you than that, you don’t say a word, mind me?”

  “Then why she telling us?” Me voice be too loud, but that be the only way to stop it breaking. “We ain’t no wolves to carry her secrets for her.”

  Me aunt snorts, her cup clattering onto its saucer. “You told me this child be bright.”

  “Bright as the Moon,” me Mam says with a glare. Then she takes me hand in hers and I feel the roughness of her skin and the hard little callouses from all her sewing, and I want time to stop and whatever be coming to stop with it. But time pays no mind to such useless prayers as mine, and me Mam, she keeps on talking.

  “I am a wolf,” she says. “Like me sister and me own mam, though I ain’t worn the fur since long before you be born. And you a wolf too, me girl, and now you come to the age for changing and for choosing what kinda wolf you gonna be. There be fur and there be skin and there be those what live betwixt, like your Granmama kept herself. There no wrong way to be a wolf, mind me, but no easy way neither.”

  Me aunt takes me by the chin, lifts me face so there ain’t nothing to do but look her dead in the eye. “You search inside yourself and think on how you been feeling since your bloods come, the itch of being stuck all the time in your own skin, your jaw aching like it want nothing more’n to rip and to rend. Think on how you felt last night, seeing the Moon swollen up in the sky, hearing your kin howling for her comfort, and you know me and your Mam be speaking the truth.”

  She lets me go and I slump back into me chair. Under the table, me toes curl and clench. “How I come to be a wolf then, if I don’t get bit by one?”

  “Peasant superstition!” Me aunt’s laugh be bitter as old ale.

  “You a wolf because you born a wolf,” me Mam says, and sighs. “Rachel, we doing this all wrong.”

  “You expect us to do it right? Were our mother kept all the stories, this be her job.”

  “Well, she not here no more!” She thumps her fist on the table. In his crib, me baby brother starts crying again. “Goddess preserve us,” me Mam mutters, getting up to soothe him. She brings him back in her arms and unfastens her bodice, pushes a nipple into his grizzly mouth till he latches on and begins to suck like her milk gonna dry up any moment.

  “Be Jacob a wolf too?” I ask.

  “No,” me Mam says. “This little tyke be just a boy, through and through. He gonna grow up a man and never know nothing of wolves save to stay outta their way.”

&nb
sp; “Like his father?” me aunt says, low and dangerous.

  “You let that alone,” me Mam snaps. “That ain’t for right now.” Her voice sounds strained, tired, but there be steel running through it. I keep perfectly still, fingernails digging welts into me palms as the two of them glower at each other across the table. Cause I see it now, the wolf curled up inside me Mam all these years, hibernating behind her plump cheeks and pretty smile. I see it sleeping, and I don’t want it to stir.

  “Well then,” me aunt says finally. “We start over. We start at the beginning.”

  And so she explains again, about our family, about the wolves and their secrets. Me Mam chips in now and then, to add a bit more or to put the words another way when she sees me getting confused, but mostly she just sits, nursing me baby brother and letting me aunt shape the story to her own way of telling. I learn how most wolves, once they get to changing, run in fur near all their lives, how they make families with wolves of the woods—them that won’t never know skin—and how they be treated no different by their natural brethren, never hunted down or driven away, never shunned or scorned or had violence done to them for what they happen to be. I learn how if a she-wolf gets herself with cub while running in fur, then those cubs will always be natural wolves no matter the father, and how if she likewise be skin-walking and find herself a man, then her children be just the same as him, like me own brother who ain’t never gonna feel the howl of wolf-blood in his veins.

  And how if she change her shape while her belly be heavy, then there won’t be no cubs, nor baby neither.

  Only when two wolves lay together in their skins, do a moon-baby get conceived, and only if the she-wolf keep herself a woman all those months of growing, do a new beast get born what will come to know both worlds as well, or as little, as it wishes.

  “Wolves like us,” me aunt says, “they be rare.”

  I turn to me Mam. “Then me Pa, he be a wolf too? Like you?”

  She always told me he were a hunter. She told me he got stuck out in a blizzard the very first winter after I be born, that he caught chill and died. Now she nods. “A wolf what couldn’t bear to walk on two legs from moon to moon, a wolf what went back to run in the woods.”

 

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