Oh, yuck. I was standing in a basement, some kind of industrial basement with lots of generators or boilers or something. It had been flooded, and ‘water’ was too generous a word for the bad smelling slime I’d landed in and now had all over me. The basement was huge, and a single electrical light shone dimly by a door at the far end, up a set of stone steps. I ran. Whatever a fetch was, I didn’t want it climbing in here after me. Then, I let out a little whine and ran faster, because something moved.
It wasn’t just the splashing of the slime. As I passed, things lurched clumsily up out of the water. This was exactly where you found man-eating zombies, and as foul as my sneakers felt filled with this stuff, they kept me from slipping as I charged down the row towards that distant door. It was getting closer too slowly. How fast were the things behind me?
The rat might have heard my thoughts. He crawled up onto my shoulder and squeaked, “Don’t look back, mistress. Keep running, and whatever you do, don’t look back!” Then, as my head turned, the little bastard threw himself over my eyes. I couldn’t see anything but rat belly, and pain spiked through me as my foot hit the first stair, and my shin hit the second. I crawled up the stairway blind. I could either pull the rat off my face or find the door handle, and I chose to do the latter. Wonderfully, it came open the moment I pulled on it, and I launched myself out into fresh night air and slammed the door behind me. Even better, I felt a bolt and I shoved that home. I didn’t have to pull the rat off my face, because he slid back down onto my shoulder on his own, panting as if he’d done all the running himself.
“You seem to know what’s going on. Where are we, is it safe, and where can I wash off all this gunk?” I wheezed.
Recovering from his unearned stupor, the rat jumped off my shoulder, latching onto the cement block wall and sliding down it with his claws. Gee, he didn’t want to climb through the goo splattering my clothes. What a surprise. He hopped up the steps to ground level, and I trudged up after him with much heavier legs.
“Abandoned industrial park, I’d say,” he concluded, “We should be safe. Nothing from down there will want to chase you up here, and if anything horrible happens in old factory yards, I can’t think of an example.”
“Wash,” I insisted as my shoes squished under my feet and left rainbow colored puddles on the concrete. The last step left me in a huge courtyard of gravel and asphalt, with looming buildings made mostly out of rusty pipes.
“I don’t know offhand.” The Rat sniffed the air, but all I could smell was me. “I will find it for you, mistress, trust me. Crossing running water wouldn’t be a bad idea right now anyway.”
So many questions. Screw them, I didn’t want to sound ignorant. Besides, there was something I had to say. I didn’t want to, but it was more important than all the complaining I really felt like doing.
“You tried to save my life back there, rat. Maybe you did save my life. Thanks,” I grumbled reluctantly.
“You are my responsibility, and I am yours, mistress. I hope to give much more than I take,” the furry little beast replied. He sounded smug.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped at him. Every time he said it, it nagged at me. “I get it, you’ve decided you’re my pet or whatever, but nobody uses that word anymore. For anything. Call me Mary, or ‘Miss’ if you really have to be formal about it. And tell me your name.”
“I am Rat-In-Boots, Mary,” he answered. He stood up on his hind legs, which rats are good at anyway, and tried to bow, which rats aren’t good at.
He was going to say more, but I had to object. “It’s Puss-In-Boots, and you aren’t wearing boots.”
“I’m smarter than any cat, and I’ll take better care of you,” Rat-In-Boots sniffed proudly. I would have smiled if I weren’t covered in what I was afraid was zombie filth. “But you must give me the boots yourself. That should be our first priority. Find me some boots, and I’ll prove to you I’m better than a cat.”
“Our first priority is getting me clean,” I corrected him firmly. I felt like I’d just been through exactly what I’d just been through, and rust was the least unpleasant thing caked onto my clothes.
To my surprise, he didn’t argue. He took this stuff seriously. His pointy face craned around as he studied the dark buildings, and he mumbled, “Water, water; anything near a factory would be contaminated. We need to get out of here anyway. Modern stories are all lost kidneys and poison and the undead. That greenhouse might be just what we need.”
He took off, his little clawed feet rattling over the gravel. The temptation hit me to turn around and walk the other way, but he was doing what I told him. I squelched after him, sounding as nasty as I felt.
his industrial yard was huge. The only light was the moon in the sky, sullen and slightly red. The air was cool and breezy, but not unpleasantly cold. A perfect Halloween night, at least to look at. In the dim distance, I could barely make out high walls surrounding the yard. They were a long way away, and Rat was leading me to a greenhouse instead.
It almost fit in with the other buildings. The glass started a floor up and was broken and filthy, while the lower walls were made of cinderblocks stained with ancient, illegible graffiti. Dead trees poked branches out through the holes in the glass. When I walked around the corner to the front doors, I only caught ‘27’ before the metal sign over them fell off and crashed onto the gravel in front of me, lying face down.
Now I grinned, despite it all. That had been perfect.
Rat-In-Boots tried to get the door for me, jumping up to wrestle with a handle. I showed him my way. I kicked the double doors squarely in the middle, and they both jumped off their hinges and fell inwards. Ha!
“Where are we, Rat?” I asked finally. If he belonged to me, I guessed I was allowed to ask questions.
“Abandoned factory district. For the moment. Look there,” he answered, pointing down the row of dead trees inside the greenhouse.
Instead, I looked back over my shoulder at the decrepit buildings and their smokestacks and pipes and gigantic holding tanks. “No, I mean where is this place?” I insisted.
“No one knows,” he squeaked impatiently, “It’s lost. You’re lost, this place is lost—adventures don’t happen if you know where you are. Hansel and Gretel didn’t meet the witch until their breadcrumbs were eaten. Circe’s Island might be a place, but Odysseus couldn’t draw you a map to it. If he did, all you’d find there would be pigs, not transformed sailors.”
Great. I’d gotten the smart-ass rat. I guess we get the rat we deserve.
I begrudgingly turned back and looked the way he’d originally wanted, and wasn’t entirely surprised that the greenhouse was bigger on the inside than the outside. Or longer, at least. The trees on either side of the stone aisle went on and on and on.
“And where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m getting us more lost. We can stay here in the modern stories if you like, Miss Mary, but they don’t have many Happily Ever Afters,” he answered. He was trying to sound encouraging and respectful. He really would stay if I wanted.
“I’d like to get cleaned up. Period.”
“We’ll have better odds of finding water in a forest, Miss,” he pointed out. It made me look back over my shoulder at the industrial yard, but it wasn’t like there were any fountains or rivers to contradict him with.
Broken glass tinkled under my sneakers as I stepped over the fallen doors. The trees got bigger, crowding the glass ceiling, and they got less dead. The leaves might be brown and red, but they were still on the branches and it didn’t take long until I couldn’t see the roof. I could still see the cement block walls on either side, right up until they ran up against another wall made of piled up stones. A wrought iron gate stood right in the middle of the path, but before it could block me, Rat-In-Boots ran up and knocked on it with his tiny knuckles. It swung open.
On the other side were more trees, and a complete lack of greenhouse. The canopy crowded the top of the stone wall, and I itched to cli
mb up and peek over, but something else caught my attention.
On a branch a few trees ahead of me hung clothes. Clean clothes. Garish scarlet and white with skirts, but clean.
I darted down the path to them, wrestling with my blouse. I hadn’t even noticed the path, but I didn’t have a lot of experience with forests. By the time I reached the dress, the bare dirt track in the middle of the dry undergrowth was obvious.
“What are you doing?!” squealed the—my, I supposed—rat in horror.
“The mess is all on my clothing,” I explained irritably as I threw my blouse down on the path. It splatted.
“But don’t you know what you’re putting on?” he insisted. Wow, I’d stunned him. It made reaching up to run the thick, soft, clean cotton through my fingers all the more heavenly.
“It’s a Red Riding Hood costume,” I acknowledged. “Tacky, but it’s Halloween, and it’s clean. Not like—ugh!” I shimmied out of my skirt and threw it on top of the blouse. The noise was even wetter and more nauseating. My shoes I could just tuck off, but I had to peel the stockings off with great care to keep gunk off my fingers. The real blessing was that my hair had stayed dry!
“Mistress, you can’t put that on! You have to know the story of Red Riding Hood. It’s a thousand years old, and still alive and growing! You know what happens!” The little guy was panicking. I felt kind of sorry for him. Not sorry enough to let him tell me what to do.
“Yeah, a woodsman comes along and chops the wolf open and Red and her granny fill its belly with stones and it dies and they make a coat out of it. The End,” I filled in smugly as I pulled several layers of petticoats over my head. Oh, it felt good. It felt really, really good.
“Only in one version in a thousand years,” my rat squeaked, pulling on his ears in what I had to admit was the most adorable gesture possible. “In all the others Red dies. All of them. Or, well, it depends on what you think is a fate worse than death.”
Ha! I restrained the urge to laugh out loud. The little guy didn’t deserve that. He was just so embarrassed, and it was obvious why. This costume was intended for a girl who’d hit puberty, and hit it running. Okay, A short girl who’d hit puberty. I’d been able to pull a bunch of laces tight and it mostly fit me, but it was trying to show off things I didn’t have. It was one of those slutty costumes that give Halloween a bad name, or would have been if I had more to show off than a pair of shoulders. Which the cape and hood covered quite nicely. I didn’t feel all that immodest at all, especially since I’d left the panties on the branch and stuck with mine, which had four times as much fabric and twenty times as much dignity.
“You could put this outfit on a ruler and it’d be sexier than me, Rat,” I assured him dryly.
“Technically correct,” purred the Wolf, slinking out of the bushes, “But presentation and attitude are everything, and I find you devastatingly attractive, Red. Just not in a way that would offend prudish minds.”
The conflict was jarring. That voice wrapped you in honey and velvet, deep and rich and passionate like an old time blues singer’s. The body was a wolf’s, dirty gray and big. Too big to be a real animal. Dark blue eyes watched me with confident intelligence. They didn’t just watch, they roamed over me, taking me in. Suddenly, despite his assurance, the dress felt a lot less modest.
A weight pulled on the back of my skirt. It crawled up my dress at high speed, until a furry head popped over my shoulder and Rat-In-Boots squeaked, “Don’t talk to him! Don’t say anything at all! The story’s started, but it can’t end until he charms you!” He was trying to whisper, to keep his voice down. That was ridiculous. The Wolf could hear him.
“Have you picked up another animal guide already, Red?” the Wolf asked, easing out onto the path. He didn’t look like one, but he moved like a cat. “Normally I’d hate to move in on another man’s territory, but there’s nothing he can offer you that I can’t, and so much more.” That voice was heaven. It sounded like lies were better than the truth. Which was a position I wouldn’t always argue with.
On the other hand, I wasn’t stupid and if I didn’t believe in cooties, I had classmates who did. I was supposed to want to hear this voice on the pillow next to me. Mainly I wanted to hear it announcing the next album on the radio. “If you’re trying to charm me, dog face, insulting my rat is a bad way to start,” I growled at him, “He’s a hell of a lot more trustworthy than you are.”
“Yes, he is. He has your best interests at heart, and my desires are entirely selfish. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? He’s a goody goody. He thinks there’s a right way and a wrong way and life’s as simple as that. You’re like me. You think that right hides behind wrong and wrong hides behind right and you’ll make up your own mind, even if you’re wrong. I can hear it in your voice. That excites me. The rat is right, there’ve been a thousand years of Red Riding Hoods, but not like you.” He circled me as he talked, his tail swaying close enough to brush across my hip. It was shark-like, predatory. He wasn’t bothering to hide what he was. It was honest, and he’d seen through me like glass.
“I would give my life for yours, mistress,” the rat whimpered, cowering on my shoulder. The honesty in the Wolf’s voice had intimidated him. I believed both of them.
The Wolf wound around in front of me again. He gave his heavy head a roll, gesturing down the path. “You think you know how this goes, and so does the rat,” a voice like chocolate ice cream explained to me, “But you’re not going to your grandmother’s house, and I don’t want to get there ahead of you. I just want you to make a choice, about whether you’ll be who the rat wants you to be, or you’ll be who you want to be. You have to make it on your own. I want you to make it on your own, so that it’s entirely your decision. Do you see where the path curves ahead of us?”
I saw what he meant. “It’s not a path, it’s a fork. One path is just hard to see.”
He chuckled. He loved that I’d noticed. “That’s right. Most people only see one path. There are flowers there. Sunshine. It’s a path most Red Riding Hoods would love to take. The other leads you through the shadows, but where the sunny path leads to fun, the shadow path leads to satisfaction. You know exactly what I mean.”
I didn’t say anything, but I did.
He turned away from me now, and trotted down towards the fork. “I’m going to take the shadow path, Red. I hope I see you there. I’d like to finally walk that path with Red Riding Hood by my side, rather than waiting for me like a lamb at the end and only good for food.”
I let him disappear into the darker branch of the fork, staring with my mouth open and my heart hammering in my chest. The rat whimpered on my shoulder. Then when I turned and walked right off the path into the bushes, he squeaked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m not taking either path. Every word he said might be true, but he was still lying to me,” I spat in disgust. “I’m getting out of this story. He can’t make me be Red Riding Hood.”
“It’s too late. You made yourself into Red Riding Hood. I could have given you any story you wanted, and you picked this one,” squealed Rat in anguish, “Why couldn’t you listen to me? Puss-In-Boots gets Jack, and I get you?”
Fury boiled up in me. I grabbed Rat in one hand and threw him at the ground, hard. Then I kept walking. “Then go find Jack, whoever the hell he is! I don’t need you!” I yelled.
Scurrying in dead leaves followed me. A weight grabbed the back of my skirt. I was about to kick him off when he said, “Jack’s an idiot. He can’t think for himself. He can’t do anything for himself. Mary got herself into trouble, then got herself out. I’ll take Mary as my owner, because she won’t wait for me to save her. But I hope she’ll let me help.”
I grunted. It had been a pretty good apology. It hadn’t been an apology at all, but I wouldn’t have believed an actual apology. People usually meant what they said, both the insults and the praise.
“Will he follow me?” I asked, trying to keep the resentment out of my voice. I wasn�
��t going to let a rat be a better friend than me. The rat was scoring pretty low right now, but I’d been scoring lower.
“Yes,” Rat-In-Boots answered. It was immediate. No doubt in his voice, and plenty of fear. “It might be a while, but the story has started. It has to find its end, and that means he will find you.”
“He won’t find me soon. I’m going to get good and lost,” I grumped.
“You’re heading in the right direction for that, Miss,” Rat-In-Boots promised.
certainly wasn’t meant to go this way. This forest became a thick, choking jumble a few steps off the path. The trees crowded close enough that their branches tangled overhead, and between the trunks lurked dry, withered bushes. It was a world of dead leaves and stiff, scratchy twigs.
I forced my way through it anyway. I missed my shoes and stockings, but four layers of skirts were armor down to my knees. I was heading in a direction the Wolf hadn’t thought of, so scratched shins? Completely worth it.
But what was this direction?
“You’re my guide. Where are we going?” I asked my rat.
“That’s a dangerous question to ask, and there’s no answer,” he squeaked from my shoulder.
“You take this being lost thing seriously, Rat,” I accused.
“There are ways to get around,” he admitted reluctantly, “Gates, signs that you can go from one place to another. I knew a way into fairy tales when I saw one. I was born here.”
“I’m really stuck in fairy tales now? A bunch of dwarves are gathered around a glass casket over the next hill?” I prodded.
“Not that one. Maybe. I don’t think so. The Red Riding Hood story is alive, but Snow White has already been told.” He kept rearing up and casting his nose around, staring into the darkness and sniffing the faint night breeze. Was he trying to avoid looking at me? He gave in quickly and confessed, “I took us here automatically. I didn’t think about it. Fairy tales are deep, but we’re easy to get to, and I know how it all works here.”
Quite Contrary Page 2